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Did Life Originate Underwater?
TuringTest writes "Sciencedaily reports a highly controversial new theory about the origins of life from Professor William Martin of the University of Dusseldorf and Dr Michael Russell of the Scottish Environmental Research Centre in Glasgow. The theory briefly states that inorganic cells where first, then living systems evolved inside these incubators which allowed an enough rich micro-environment. The small compartments would have been formed in iron sulphide rocks near hot, hydrothermal vents on the sea floor, not in the atmosphere. Wow, that would answer the chicken-egg problem."
The real question is, was life seeded from an object from space carrying single celled life? Has this been disproven/proven yet?
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Programming is like sex... Make one mistake and support it the rest of your life.
No Problem.
"I'm just here to regulate funkiness."
Sure, this makes sense but how do these microenvironments start to self-replicate with a genetic code? I guess that's the leap to figure out.
Regular Meta Moderators are not more likely to get mod points.
Wow, that would answer the chicken-egg problem.
:
No, it reduces the Q to "what was first : the fish or the egg ?"
It does offcourse open endless possibilities
Why did the fish cross the road ??????
When will I end this grieving ? When will my future begin ?
The theory briefly states that inorganic cells WERE first...
Jesus Fucking Christ, was that so difficult ?
I have always meant that life started underwater. I do not know why, it just made more sense.
life originated under YOU
The whole which came first the chicken or the egg thing. I mean it was the rooster right? :P
Happy Noodle Boy says "F###ing doughnut! Mock me? You fried cyclops!!"
+5 FUNNY funny FUNNY funny
funny almost as the screen door on that ruskie submarine
Why is this article news?
If the bowl of my toilet is any indication, DEFINITELY.
it's the first time a story of mine got its way to the front page! Enjoy it, slashdotters. I forgot to add a link to the Google News coverage of this news.
Singularity: a belief in the "God" idea with the "demiurge" relation inverted.
Is there life ABOVE water???
No, it doesn't answer the chicken and the egg problem at all. What came before these things? did they get created out of thin air?
magnanomous.
I'd suggest reading Genesis chapter 1.
...new IIS security hole.
So, rather than self-replicating hydrocarbons forming in the air and dropping into the sea to become cells, we have half-hydro-phobic half-hydro-phalic molecular compounds forming cells from heavier chemicals and eventually developing self-replication later. It is rather topsy-turvey.
"Times have not become more violent. They have just become more televised."
-Marilyn Manson
Did Life Originate Underwater?
Yes. Yes it did.
Oh... I thought that said underwear.
If I had any mod points, I would have modded you up as +1 Funny. This is an article about science, not fantasy. And no, throwing the word "creation" in front of the word "science" doesn't make it any more credible.
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
One of the implications of Martin and Russell's theory is that life on our planet, even on other planets or some large moons in our own solar system, might be much more likely than previously assumed. Extraordinary claims...
Roving Web-Teleoperated Robot
I love the Dorf series and was looking forward to more crazy shenanigans - "Dorf on Autoracing" was my favorite. "Dorf on Evolution" doesn't seem as exciting.
How long till someone is shouting, "People is Soylent Green!!! People is Soylent Green!"
As all life is compartmentalized (and generally subcompartmentalized), then compartmentalization is a necessary event in the creation of Earthlike life. The theories that start with the ocean being an amino acid soup (and how did those amino acids get us the DNA we need for replication?) are all fine and good, but they really don't get at how clumps of lipids, proteins and DNA became self replicating and distinct from that clump over there.
This hypothesis, at least, is an attempt to get at the problem of compartmentalization of life, though it doesn't seem to involve lipids as elements in that compartmentalization, really. It is a necessary step, but not the whole picture.
Gray
Your question is irrelavent. It doesn't answer the basic question: Where did life start. It only adds another layer. Even if life on Earth fell from the sky you still have to answer the question of where did that life start. Otherwise you are avoiding the fundimental question.
Boobies never hurt anyone. - Sherry Glaser.
That problem was solved a long time ago.
It was the chicken, because that is what God Created!
With all the intelligence we can see and appreciate in our design and the intelligence that we can hopefully recognize in ourselves, you expect me to believe that all this intelligence came from hot water and random circumstances? When we presuppose God wasn't the creator and instead have hot water and inorganic material to thank, absolute ethics are all wet and we may find ourselves in hot water after we die. Well, maybe we will wish for water.
In an unrelated paper the creators of this theory, William Martin and Michael Russell, along with fellow collaborators John Edward (noted psychic), and Charles Philip Arthur George Windsor (Prince of Wales)
reveal their theory that the more first names you have the smarter you are.
Billy Ray Bob Cameron-James
"I don't know half of you half as well as I should like, and I like less than half of you half as well as you deserve."
Now we'd have to send a probe to the bottom of another planet's oceans, and then find a geothermel vent, and then get a sample out of it that doesn't kill whatever could be inside. Nevermind telling anyone what it found...
What we are not sure of is the intellegence of said life.
Better call X-Com quick, there'll be telling us alien life began underwater too .
Blame Lovecraft, but those pesky aliens get everywhere.
Your answer solves nothing. It just moves the real questions up one level.
If I am wrong, please correct me.
All your underwater life are belong to us
I rarely wear but when I do it is ussually a fine mesh....
Wow, a religious troll. No wonder you're full of crap.
That was the most nonsensical rant I've ever heard. Creationist beleifs have ablsolutely nothing to do with ethics. In fact, no religious construct does. Ethics is a science based on reason, not blind faith.
Everyone is entitled to their own opinion. It's just that yours is stupid.
Everyone knows that life begins in the back seat of an El Camino! DUH! :)
Shouldn't it be to add science at the end of creation for the sake of credibility?
If this is true then why are they finding the same kind of Archea bacteria (thermo lithitrops i think) that they find at underwater theromal vents in side of oil wells?
. bo ok.deb.html
I still think Thomas Gold is right on this one
http://www.news.cornell.edu/releases/Jan99/gold
hook
Does someone out there know, for the purpose of understanding this article, what is the difference between:
1 - A cell which is called "organic".
and
2 - A cell which is called "inorganic".
From a purely scientific (philosophically materialist) standpoint, what is the difference between a small self contained replicating machine and a small self contained replicating organism?
Don't label something "offtopic" unless you know the topic well enough to tell what's on topic.
Well it's not like there's any more hard evidence that sets these theories apart from Genesis.
Besides, the two address the same event from two different perspectives. Genesis isn't explaining 'creation' in scientific terms nor is scientific theory explaining God. They're mutually exlusive no matter how hard one tries to use one to prove/disprove the other.
I offer my son as proof that life originates underwater... undoubtedly due to that bit of sex in the hot tub with the wife-to-be one cold August night.
"in essence - life first, cells second and the atmosphere playing a role"
Is this right? The accepted theories for the origin of cells are based on life first, then cells? WTF does that mean? Without cells, how do you define "life"?
Underwater, UV was blocked, but longer wavelengths could penetrate to permit photosynthesis. Once photosynthesis liberated enough molecular oxygen to produce an ozone layer, life was able to move onto dry land.
What's novel about the theory in the article is that it proposes that living cells were preceded by nonliving inorganic cells.
The guy is an idiot. More diversity in pools above on shores. Also ULTRAVIOLET energy from sunlight is very helpful, and originally oxygen (damaging) was low. Also by having evaporation of tidal pools and rainwater pools, various concentrations can be explored.
many protein-rich soups create single walled "bacterium-like" objects of uniform size, but without two walls, there is no way to protect a lifeform object.
Extremophiles are kooks. Its FAR MORE LIKELY that unfavorable living conditions were populated by life LAST not first. Expecially because sunlight is so far away from these environments, and OCCAMS razor indicates that extreme conditions were probably populated last not first.
prions and virii are not life by many peoples definitions, but I wonder how many prion-like entities would form in goddamned ocean water by chance.... not likely... you need tiday pools and amonia and ultraviolet light and electricity.
He just want big-budget funding money because studying deep sea life is expensive and easy to syphon off tons of money.
If I was a biologist I would do the same to justify a huge budget for research. Even NASA is doing it (extreme life studies).
The idea that life started in the oceans is pretty old, and both the surface and depths were considered. Almost immediately after the discovery of hydrothermal vents, the idea started kicking around that they might be where life started, mostly because they are very rich in chemicals and early life forms could potentially have gotten by with pretty simple collections of enzymes. Any theory on the origins of life are still basically completely unsupported.
I can say without reservation that its impossible for life to have begun under water. Attempting the relatively simple task of bringing to life a packet of seamonkies shows the impossibility of this. All one can wind up with is some brown briney water...
C - A language that combines the speed of assembly with the ease of use of assembly.
So I should believe this just in case? And humanity should just except it with out proof instead of trying to figure out the true origins life. What if a different entity is god and not the Christian god? He/She/It would be pretty pissed at you for believing that Christian nonsense.
What would be worse is if another intelligent life form had their own religion completely different than ours and their religion in fact knew of the real god. We may never know for another million years until we find the life form. Unless their god came to visit us, but that's not how gods work, they don't want factual data to prove their existence.
Understanding is a three-edged sword. -- Kosh Naranek
Chicken-egg asks you which came last.
Easiest way to to determine if these organisms and more well-known organisms share a common ancestery is through DNA. Do these deep-sea bacteria have similar DNA structures? Don't all lifeforms studied so far use the same 4 genetic molecules (A, C, G, T ??)?
As long as they have chromosomes, and use the same 4 genetic molecules, there is almost no possibility that they are not related to the rest of life on Earth. What are the scientific chances of two lifeforms forming and evolving, with identical genetic processes?
There's no such thing as creationism... oh, well, except for that ONE TIME when some really simple organism spontaneously assembled from inorganic materials... which, really, is common anywhere you have wet rocks containing certain compounds, and the cell that spontaneously forms also has the teeth to chew its way out of the rock, where it can start multiplying...
Frankly, I don't see these claims as having much more scientific credibility than the notion that man was created from dust. Produce life out of inorganic material --- and not just a random mix of "left and right handed" amino acids, but something that can actually function and reproduce --- then you've got a foundation for saying that life is commonplace. Ditto if E.T. lands in D.C. to spank President Bush, or makes a collect call to SETI.
But claiming life is "much more likely" based on a theory at this stage is just silliness fueled by too many Star Trek episodes and too little science.
The whole Darwinism theory doesn't convince me at all. The "survival of the fittest" is OK, but it just won't convince me (or anyone that doesn't treat Darwinism like the absoulte truth) that we came from an incredibly long process of mutations. It's plain stupid and senseless.
The research by Professor Martin and Dr Russell is backed up by another paper The redox protein construction kit: pre-last universal common+ ancestor evolution of energy-conserving enzymes by F. Baymann, E. Lebrun, M. Brugna, B. Schoepp-Cothenet, M.-T. Giudici-Orticoni & W. Nitschke which will be published in the same edition.
Backed up by another recently to be published paper, wow, what a backup! Underwhelming. Did these goobers do something like the Miller experiment to show it IS possible? I freaking doubt it. Rookies! Bah Low Me!
I wouldn't call them mutually exclusive - they're more complementary.
Science tries to tell us why we're alive, religion tells us how to live.
I was thinking more along the lines of one trying to explain the other. Your point is well taken, though.
People have also been saying that life orginated with complex inorganic clay matrices. An SF book had that in it a while ago (one moment, googling...)
L if e.htm
"Although changes in DNA generate biological diversity, genes are a product of evolution, not its driving force. In fact, geodesic forms similar to those found in viruses, enzymes and cells existed in the inorganic world of crystals and minerals long before DNA ever came into existence. Even water molecules are structured geodesically."
http://time.arts.ucla.edu/Talks/Barcelona/Arch_
Just because a bit of information doesn't answer ONE particular question doesn't mean it's irrelevant. If life came to earth from a meteor hit, that would have many relevant repercussions, including:
1 - We would know it's a waste of time to try to figure out how life began in the universe in general by looking at the evidence available here on Earth.
2 - We would know life on other worlds must exist, or at the very least, must have existed in the past.
Don't label something "offtopic" unless you know the topic well enough to tell what's on topic.
...Christian, but I believe in evolution and all the rest of methodical science.
Confusing?
"In the beginning, God created the Heavens and the Earth."
Ok...So we had the Big Bang, everything cooled down a bit, stars were born, and this little dustball of a planet was compacted by gravity into a nice ball of molten rock. Thanks to the parallel axis theorem, the spin of all the dust in the solar system gave us angular momentum, so we now have a day and a night.
At some point, God created life in his image. OK, so now we have biological functions.
Unless you can read Hebrew, all you have to go on is other peoples' interpretations of the original text into a different langauge.
Even the concept Man was created first depends on the translation of that specific word. And did you know Hebrew wasn't spoken natively (again) until the 1900s? Plenty of time for humanity to lose touch with the language.
What's this Submit thingy do?
I don't see how this is controversial. It seems very reasonable to me that organic self-replicating polymers (such as RNA) would develop near inorganic catalytic matrices, which could then allow further development of more complex "organic" life. Yes, the definition of organic and inorganic breaks down somewhat here, as organic is usually defined as "originating from a living organism" and typically involve carbon compounds (thus not diamonds or graphite). The UV protection and catalytic properties of water, coupled to the heat of a thermal vent seems like an ideal place for me for life to develop. aloha, psilo
"God wasn't the creator" is not a presupposition. It's the default hypothesis until evidence sways us otherwise. NOT believing a theory yet is the default, and in the case for God, the ones who say "yes, god exists" are the ones that have taken on 100% of the burden of proof.
Don't label something "offtopic" unless you know the topic well enough to tell what's on topic.
What the fuck are inorganic cells? Crystals? Bullshitdotcom! Back to school fool! Obviously you believe this crapola. I have a steel structure in France that would make great scrap material. Want to purchase the rights to salvage it?
Theories about life starting underwater have been around ever since hydrothermal vents were discovered, I beleive, in 1977. The fact that they say organic life developed out of inorganic materials isn't really revolutionary. I mean, the first organic life couldn't have evolved from other organic life, thats paradoxical.
Did Life Originate Underwater?
Uhh, is the pope Polish?
http://almostsmart.com
I know that the gimps here pride themselves on their mean spiritedness, and snobbishness; God knows an original idea can't come from a mere reader, it had to be handed down from Einstein.
God I've been thinking about dropping this place because there is *NO* discussion here. Only a few pampered pets to get points and a bunch of wanna bes.
Im tired of this. Guys like you make me puke.
As for absolute ethics, you are pretty much out of luck whether we evolved or not. Absolute ethics is based upon a rather stupid and completely unverified premise--that a Creator must be good. Never mind that it is something that doesn't seem to hold particularly true among human creators, or that even the Bible provides very little evidence for the goodness of it's self-styled "Creator."
and the cell that spontaneously forms also has the teeth to chew its way out of the rock, where it can start multiplying... ...and inmediatly imagined bacteria playing a FPS!
My life originated in a hot-tub at the Holiday Inn.
Sex - Find It
Oops, tidal pool dried up - so much for this line of evolution.
To me it seems more likely that a stable environment with a stable and constant energy source would be much more conducive to the creation of complex and almost certainly very fragile early living creatures or proto-creatures. In other words, the exact type of environment a geothermal vent offers.
Is it possible that we'll never know the answer to this question of where life started? I think we've already come to the conclusion that life can exist and reproduce under some of the most extreme conditions. I fail to see how we can pick which of these conditions is right without the use of a time machine. Even if someone were to create a life from nothing, this doesn't necessarily mean that it's how the first life was created.
This theory answers nothing, just provides one more possibility of what could have happened.
I have often regretted my speech, never my silence.
-Xenocrates
Anyone Aboriginie (sp) slashdotters out there have a reference?
Seriously, Don't take anything I say seriously.
The difference is, "science" (I'll use it as a generic term for use of the scientific method), sets out to TEST theories in order to prove them to a certain degree of probability. Believing a book, with no chance of proving it one way or the other, doesn't follow the scientific method. If you want hard evidence, do you try to get some, or simply believe what you have been told to believe?
Besides, the two address the same event from two different perspectives. Genesis isn't explaining 'creation' in scientific terms nor is scientific theory explaining God. They're mutually exlusive no matter how hard one tries to use one to prove/disprove the other.
Pardon? Have you followed the news where backwards-thinking schools have fought to teach Creation in science class? I agree with you, it belongs in religion class. What is disgraceful is when people try to give their theories credibility by leeching on the hard work of scientists - hence the invention of "creation science". There is nothing scientific about it. If you want to believe in something like that, you have the right, but don't try to pass it off as science.
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
1 box of LIFE cereal - $2.50
/.
1 jug of Whole Milk - $1.50
1 mixing-bowl - $1.50
1 spoon - $0.50
TOTAL: $6.00
Directions: Combine cereal and milk in mixing bowl. Use spoon to stir vigorously. Let mixture stand at room temperature for a few days. Something will begin to grow.
Omnipotence on a budget: PRICELESS
For everything else, there's
Just because you find a hydrothermal vent uninviting doesn't mean an anaerobic bacteria wouldn't love it.
Extremophiles are kooks. Its FAR MORE LIKELY that unfavorable living conditions were populated by life LAST not first. Expecially because sunlight is so far away from these environments, and OCCAMS razor indicates that extreme conditions were probably populated last not first.
the problem with your "theory" is the overwelming comparitive DNA evidence that shows we evolved from archea not the other way around. Also your whole razor thing falls over when you think that the original conditions of the planet are taken into consideration...such an enviornment would be extreme to us not to the archea bacteria that existed then...to them it would have been an eden. and we along with all the resperating (plants included) surface life on the planet would parish in such conditions.
Actually the Himalayas are being formed by the movement of the Indian subcontinent up into Asia, not volcanic activity.
And where do you think land comes from? A rock factory in the center of the Earth? Lava is just recycled rock, so volcanic activity just redistributes the land mass.
Why would there not be oceans like we think of them today billions of years ago?
The concept of extreme conditions makes little sense when you do not know the structure of the life form. Sulphur based life forms would find a sunny day on a Disney cruise line extremely hostile.
Come to think of it maybe you do have a point ;-)
Help fight continental drift.
Look he's called TuringTest, he's blatantly a bot, and a damn fine one too.
The spelling mistakes and other errors like the stupid title are all deliberately put there to convince you that he's a real person/slashdotter.
A bot couln't hope to fit in, if his article looked like it'd been spell-checked could it.
So stop being a muppet and congratulate whoever designed TuringTest, his genious should be recognised.
You've at least got to acknowledge how fitting it is, that the first article by an artificial life form is about the dawn of organinc life.
I don't understand why they think it would have been deep-water hydrothermal vents rather than shallow-water. It seems to me that shallow water would have made it easier to access organic molecules from the atmosphere -- synergy with the chemistry from the geothermal water would have (IMHO) increased the probability of life starting there.
Among other things, I'm wondering if/why they figure that the two sources of live are mutually exclusive.
OS Software is like love: The best way to make it grow is to give it away.
Is it just me, or was the writing for this submission so bad as to obfuscate meaning? For god's sake, why do we have editors if they can't even do us the courtesy of making the stories readable?
If I guessed at its meaning correctly, this does make for a very interesting theory. Of course, it's hard to tell with the poor writing...
I did not design this game/I did not name the stakes/I just happen to like apples/And I am not afraid of snakes-AniD
So *that*'s how you get friends and foes and freaks and whatnot! There's a button that does it. I've been blocking images from Slashdot for so long (trust me, you're saving more money not feeding me the bits than you're losing not feeding me the ads!) it didn't even occur to me there might be *useful* images! I'll have to remember that.
Now, can anyone explain what a "freak" is in the Slashdot context? And I've already come up with all the lame jokes along the lines of "it refers to the readership" thankyouverymuch.
High-speed Road Trip (18.000KPH)
1 box of "LIFE" cereal - $2.50
/.
1 jug of Whole Milk - $1.50
1 mixing-bowl - $1.50
1 spoon - $0.50
TOTAL: $6.00
Directions: Combine cereal and milk in mixing bowl. Use spoon to stir vigorously. Let mixture stand at room temperature for a few days. Something will begin to grow.
Omnipotence on a budget: PRICELESS
For everything else, there's
I always thought the standard theory was that, religious texts aside (let's just not go there OK? I have my beliefs, you have yours, they probably collide), life did originate in the ocean and gradually evolved to land. At least that's what I was taught in school. This is the same school mentioned in the infamous "When the World was Pink" post I made last month (yes, I'm still cringing), see my profile...
The big question should not be - what came first, I'm more worried about what going to come last
molecules, alive or not, which replicate themselves will be more common that those that don't. repeat this rule for random mixes of molecules for one billion years. it would be surprising not to have life.
the real evil is not what people think - its how people think
.. scientists get all bent out of shape over the silliest bullshit.
Kind of like when you say linux sucks on slashdot.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
Well not that old, but at least several years. Ever since the deep ocean hot vents were discovered the idea has been kicking around that they may have been the source of the first life on earth.
-73, de n1ywb
www.n1ywb.com
With all due respect, the question of origins is ultimately a philosophical question and not a scientific one. Since we cannot observe and repeat the universal creation process, we cannot subject it to the scientific method.
What we can do is collect evidence and conjecture theories about what caused the evidence.
Ultimately that is what atheistic cosmologists and Christian cosmologists do - collect data, and have a theory about what caused the data.
You may argue that Christian cosmologists have a bias. I would submit to you that scientists with an a priori commitment to materialism have a bias as well.
Respectfully,
Anomaly
But Herr Heisenberg, how does the electron know when I'm looking?
I work at a US national lab that does a lot of research in nearly every field of science.
;)
In speaking with the different people around the lab I have found that the -vast majority- of master degree holding scientists are Agnostic.
(which is a very fitting stance...as an Agnostic needs -proof- to trust in something's actuality, just as a scientist does when doing research)
Next in numbers are Atheists (comprised mainly of Theoretical Physicists, Biologists and/or Russians. go figure
And finally, the Administration, Utilities, Facilities people, whom I've found to be
predominately Judeo-Christian. (pictures of Jesus in their cube/always out to recruit)
From what I've seen, people with little education are almost predisposed to believe in a god.
(Insecurities? A feeling of helplessness? or just "tradition"...IDK, anybody?)
FYI : These are my observations, I'm not trying to say that belief in a god can be "taught-away"
as there are a few Jesus-fish toting scientists.
There are always deviants among -any- flock....
I'm sure I'm not the only one to notice this, as I've encountered this in many different areas on the country that I've worked...
but never has the education level been this cleanly divided!
Thanks martinnt,
your'e the only one who understand me.
(As you can see, im a very polite bot)
Singularity: a belief in the "God" idea with the "demiurge" relation inverted.
I've never really understood what the problem was with this. Surely the chicken came after the egg, but whatever laid that egg wasn't (quite) a chicken.
It's amazing how the theory of evolution is one of the most widely misunderstood scientific concepts of all times. Before some people even consider posting uninformed crap such as saying that humans come from apes (one of the most widely misinterpretations of the theory), they should at least do themselves a service by reading something like Darwin's Dangerous Idea
I first read the headline as "Did Life Originate Underwear". Which is every bit as good a question, and funnier :)
Here is proof that some of the first animal life did start in the seas. There's just not *strong* evidence of other types of life on land & in the air deriving from life in the water.
Crap I hope not, or else L. Ron Hubbard would be right that we did start as clams !
I think I'll jump out of window now !
Success is not the result of spontaneous combustion, you must set yourself on fire.
Whilst this is an interesting and plausible theory it is not the first one that speculated that "cells came first", if by cell one means a simple compartment. In 1991 there were speculations that simple lipid bilayers could autoassemble and that the protected environment this produced would allow RNA structures to act as enzymes/catalysts in a local environment. Other theories postulated that the RNA-catalyst/enzyme would form on inorganic clays.
Anyway, great interesting theory, but the only truly scientific theories are ones that are falsifiable, and this one is not. It'll join all the other RNA-world/early-evolution hypotheses as interesting and plausible speculation. Nothing wrong with that, but it's a mite more interesting to investigate falsifiable hypotheses, otherwise one might as well be talking to Creationists.
Come on, this has been discussed for a long time.
This page was generated by a Barrel of Circus Midgets, and that is the way I like it!!!
Despite the fact that intuitively thermophiles seem like weird kooks, in many molecular phylogenetic analyses, thermophiles occupy the deepest branches, suggesting that life adapted to low temperature from high temperature rather than the inverse. This is also supported by the fact that the origin of life is constantly being forced backwards in time due to new evidence. As the early earth was very hot, this also supports a thermophilic origin of life.
That being said, not all phylogenetic analyses support the thermophile-early hypothesis. That's because different genes may have different histories due to horizontal transfer. Further work on whole genome phylogeny will be useful for clarifying the issue.
...not to mention the fact that we really have no frame of reference to judge the intelligence and organizational value of this universe, unless, of course, someone can point me to an alternative universe that is either more or less intelligently organized than ours, whatever that would mean in reality, so that we can compare.
I for one welcome our new SCOviet Russian overlords to whom all our base are belong.
Did life start underwater? HuH? What are you talking about? It is clearly stated in the Bible that Adam and Eve were in a garden, and I dont think ive ever seen a Garden underwater -- you silly head.
I dont understand why those silly scientists continue to talk about such nonsense, really i mean, we already have the Bible which details the creation of the earth and the universe 4000 years ago! it says it right there, in black and white! I mean, Didnt God just create life on like the 2nd or 3rd day?
You better go ask your priest if you need simple questions like these answered.
Ethics isn't based on science or reason. What we call ethics is based on our evolution as a social primate. Killing and stealing are "wrong" because a small social group can't do very well if they're killing each other and taking each other's stuff.
-B
The first says that life formed in shallow pools, which would help shield harmful UV radiation.
The second is that it was carried to Earth from an extraterrestrial collision with something like a comet; this theory was supported but not proven by the pass-by of comet Hale-Bopp, i believe, due to the fact that spectrometry revealed that it had some organic substances (IIRC, our book has no mention of it).
The final theory (before the advent of this theory) is that life originated from volcanism at eep-sea vents. This would be supported by the life at deep-sea vents like tube worms and the like.
This is NOT to be confused with the 1953 experiment by Stanley Miller where he syntheized amino acids using lightning-like electricity and a proto-Earth atmosphere of methane, hydrogen, ammonia, and other gases. Amino acids are NOT life forms!
I think the title is a little misleading. This theory of life really means that life originated in porous underwater rocks, which is either an extension of the first theory or a completely new theory depending on how you view it.
I'm the Devil the Windows users warned you about.
As if we all didn't see this coming, evo-creation. But I must say this, have you ever heard of the second law of thermo dynamics? it states that all things go from a state of order to a state of chaos. Also, Evolution is a theory, The second LAW of thermo-dynamics is a LAW. laws win out over theorys.
Yes, before significant amounts of ozone were produced, UV rays would have prohibited life developing on land. That's true.
But, that's not evidence that life formed in water. The evidence for that is the fact that we have water in us, that most of the substance that makes life is water.
Why would life develop with this enormous reliance on water if it developed away from water?
Likewise, DNA contains a rather uncommon mixture of somewhat exotic chemicals. If areas of the seas were found with features that contained large amounts of these chemicals, it would be strong evidence suggesting modern life originated from that area.
If scientific theories are correct, life formed out of a lot of time and specific events happening by chance. Rather than explaining how such an extraordinary chain of events happened, we should be looking for a place where these events aren't as extraordinary. A place where the creation of life is somewhat probable.
P.S. Saying that DNA is amazingly intricate and the nature of inhereted traits suggests an alien "seed life", or even worse, that God must have done it, is not correct.
Life came/originated/manifested itself here billions of years ago. The only life that would survive that long must have been life that could reproduce itself and create similar offspring. The alien/God argument is akin to having a box filled with different sized marbles, cutting a 20-mm hole, and claiming that there was some mystical force at hand, because when you shook the box only 20-mm and smaller marbles came out.
IOW, DNA isn't amazing or miraculous. It had to work that way.
Ah, disproven God, have you? The publication of your proof ought to have some very interesting effects on society, and I'll be watching in anticipation.
Creationists have always held that, at some point in the past, life began from non-life. On this point, science --- including these latest theorists --- agree. Christians contend that God created man and other life out of the dust, whereas science prefers to have random natural processes assemble something much simpler. Christians believe they have their answer; science keeps scratching its ass looking for something that fits.
As yet, science has come up empty. Oh sure, under controlled laboratory conditions that simulate those never found on earth researchers created some amino acids. Extraterrestrial origin, maybe, say they. But there's still a vast, inexplicable difference between a random assortment of amino acids and a simple organism that can reproduce. Think such an organism is simple? Hit the books and educate yourself otherwise.
Once science explains the mechanical origin of life (if ever it does), maybe it'll be able to tackle the much harder question of consciousness --- a problem that seems simple only to the simple of mind, and one which science virtually (and conveniently) ignores.
Science will be in a position to criticize religion when it finds credible answers to the questions of life and consciousness. Until then, science is less complete than the religion you equate to fantasy.
A slight modification of the last sentence will demonstrate that "burden of proof" doesn't exist: NOT believing a theory yet is the default, and in the case for the theory that believes in God's non-existence, the ones who say, "God doesn't exist" are the ones that have taken on 100% of the burden of proof.
"God wasn't the creator" is not a presupposition. It's the default hypothesis until evidence sways us otherwise. NOT believing a theory yet is the default, and in the case for God, the ones who say "yes, god exists" are the ones that have taken on 100% of the burden of proof.
There is as much evidence--that is, legal evidence, not scientific evidence--for the existance of God as there is that there was a King Richard of England who fought in a war called the Crusades. The theory that (a) God exists is just as sound as the theory that existance is older than the sum of human memory & created through random chance.
Science stops being science when it gets past what can be tested and proven--and it's impossible to prove that a being that can read every human thought and takes action only through apparant random chance does or does not exist.
Your rejection of God Almighty is a religious choice, not a scientific conclusion. Don't pretend it is, or you're as bad a zealot as the church officials that burnt witches or excommunicated early scientists.
Only closed systems need go from a state of order to chaos. If a system has an external energy source (like the earth has the sun) it can go the other way quite easily.
Gods existence is in fact entirely irellevant to the question of the beginning of life because it is explicitly stated that the existence of God can not be proven. So there WILL be a natural and reproducible method for the primary generation of life which does not involve the intercession of a deity outside the natural rules of the universe as they have been established. So people need to stop talking about "proving" the existence of God. The next person who tries to do that to you, just slap them. It's not worth the effort of telling them they are an idiot.
Kintanon
Check out JoshJitsu.info for Brazilian Ji
lol.
well i thought it was funny.
"I DARE you to make less sense!"
That was the most nonsensical rant I've ever heard. Creationist beleifs have ablsolutely nothing to do with ethics. In fact, no religious construct does. Ethics is a science based on reason, not blind faith.
Real Ethics are based more on experience than reason. Man can reason his way into all kinds of unethical behavior, and only experience shows us which ethics are untenable.
Your parent-poster was referring to "absolute ethics"--that is, that something can be good in and of itself, with no justification. "Moral ethic" is a better word for it.
I believe in absolute ethics, which hapilly goes right along with my religion. The only possible source of absolute ethics I can think of is the so-called 'human nature'--and even that gets us into unethical behavior.
(Don't believe me on absolute ethics? Then explain to me why it's considered unethicial to kill a living human child that will never be able to produce anything in society.)
So because of the second law of thermodynamics (which I have heard of) the christian god is in fact real?
Understanding is a three-edged sword. -- Kosh Naranek
Wait...did you just say that as an atheist I have to prove that God does not exist? Ok...I guess I'll try.
Carrot Top
The Cincinatti Bengals
Adolf Hitler
10-10-220
Extreme Ops
AIDS
Hidden surcharges
Funyuns
See...that wasn't very hard. If there was a god, none of those things would exist.
>Wow, that would answer the chicken-egg problem.
a chicken & an egg are lying naked in bed.
the chicken turns to the egg & says "well i guess we answered that question"
I cant belive we're still not over this "what came first, chicken or the egg" problem.. i mean its OBVIOUS that the EGG came first.... THere has to be a CHICKEN to be given the name CHICKEN or it would just be called EGG.... the first to be called a CHICKEN was already in the egg.. but since thers always evolution EVERY generation of something the .. thing.. that laid the egg that contained the first chicken.. was NOT a chicken.. due to evolution inside the egg that resulted in the first chicken.. therefore.. "What laid the first egg that contained the first chicken... was NOT a chicken.... but when the first chicken was given the name CHICKEN.. the egg automatically becomes wat came first because even tho it had not yet gotten the name CHICKEN.. it was still in the egg.. therefore.. the EGG CAME FIRST"!!!
Its easy.. EGG FIRST..EGG FIRST..EGG FIRST.. its now proven!
from the reheating-the-primordial-soup dept.
TuringTest writes something particularly stupid
end of story
Science stops being science when it gets past what can be tested and proven
Small correction from a practicing scientist: science stops being science when it gets past what can be tested and disproven. You can't prove a theory in a strictly scientific sense; you can only show that theories are not supported by the data (are disproven) or are currently (this being the key word) not ruled out.
Of course, you may have meant proven in the colloquial sense, in which case I don't necessarily disagree.
What Evidence are you talking about?
The evidence for intelegent design is overwhelming, as is the evidence of Jesus being God. Christianity is very logical. I suggest you study the "evidence" before making such illogical statements.
And just for the record "God was the Creator" is infact the default hypothesis that we came up with from the "evidence".
Evolutionists/Atheists have been and are still trying to disprove God's existence and have failed to do so.
after looking at the current mood going on this topic, i'm pretty sure i'll get hammered on moderation for this... but here we go...
Macro-Evolution is a THEORY. And despite what biology teachers like to profess in modern educational institutions, there is absolutely no more proof for it than there is for creationism. Evolutionists like to use the arguement of how easy it is to see the proof of it... but the exact same can be said for Creation. You just have to be willing to look. No matter which way you go, you must be willing to take a leap of faith.
I had the opportunity of seeing a Creation-Science vs. Macro-Evolution debate at my university not long ago. Amongst other things that infuriated the hell out of the evolutionist, was this interesting tidbit: while many species share body parts that are quite similar in design and function (ie. eyes), the genetic coding for those similar parts is not only completely different, but located in a completely different part of the creatures' DNA. Example: Logic would assume that if birds evolved from reptiles, then the genetic coding for the body parts that they share in common would be located in the same place, and be relatively similar. This does not hold true, however. At the genetic level, there is no proof of evolution... as the genetic differences between different families can be immense . Not to mention the broad genetic differences between different classes, orders, phylums and kingdoms! But the physical similarities between different species is often undeniable. So, this begs the question: if there is no genetic similarities (read: evolutionary relationship) between two physically similar creatures of different biologic-families, why do they have so much in common? The answer could very well be a common Creator.
Personally, in the absense of any real, solid and factual proof of evolution, I choose to believe in God and Creationism. At the heart of it, all evolution really is is a religion. Only with evolution the priests are called "biologists."
/dev/random
http://astrobiology.arc.nasa.gov/news/expandnews.c fm?id=1128
They've been understanding hydrothermal vents since forever
No, I am not willing to accept my religious beliefs are wrong.
:)
Thus disqualifying yourself from a scientific debate.
Even if you don't believe in the God of Abraham (I happen to), I fail to see how everything can be explained with no high power involved.
Have you heard of the logical fallacy of Argument from Personal Incredulity? More plainly put, it goes like this: "I can't believe that this is true, therefore it can't be true." It should be obvious that this is a fallacious line of reasoning, but then again I've found that few things are obvious to fundamentalists.
Nobody has ever been able to tell me what is outside of space and time.
Why do you believe that there is anything outside of space and time, and why are other people obligated to tell you what that is? Tell you what: if you ever find any evidence of anything that lies "outside of space and time", bring it to me and let it examine it. Until then, you're wasting everybody's time.
Your ancestors were monkeys, their ancestors were reptiles, their ancestors were fish and their ancestors were single-celled organisms. Deal with it, monkey-breath.
Hey, we'll say anything to take God out of the picture!
No, Thursday's out. How about never - is never good for you?
Life starts in water-based things...
Well, it did start in my 3 week old 2 inch standing coffee cup.
***digs out science kit***
it is explicitly stated that the existence of God can not be proven
And why is that?
IF something cant be measured it doesnt exist. Because we cant measure God dosnt mean he doesnt exist NOR does it mean he does. What the parent-poster was trying to assert was that the proof that God DOESNT exist is unecessary. Proof that he DOES is. Anyone who says " I belive in God. You should too." MUST have a proof that a God exists for him (and myself) to agree. That God exists needs to be proven -- because it cant, sensible people will not agree that he does.
To take it one step further, I say God doesnt exist because the 'proof' otherwise is so baseless, so laughably ridiculous -- so flatly stupid -- that i cant imagine "mistakes" were made in the argument; the 'ideas' forwarded by advocates of judeo-christian mythology are so incredibly preposterous that a correct DEFINITION of "GOD" should still be their goal.
I could just as easily have said "this article is about fantasy, not science." Because "fantasy" is an artificial construct that exists in a person's mind that explains something otherwise unprovable -- at which it is at least temporarily assumed to be "reality". So this scientist has a theory that explains something otherwise unprovable i.e the origin of life was a random occurence.
So this so called science is basically conjecturing that if you somehow had millions of years, and the right formation of chemicals inside the hot rocks, you could get a pre-cellular form of "life". Except for at least one thing. Now you have to transition the "pre-cellular" form of life to a cellular form. And IIRC the fact that amino acids -- the basic proteins and building blocks of most biological organisms -- don't seem to hold up well, let alone propagate, uner high temperatures.
So his little mud life creatures somehow need to develop not only a skin (the cellular membrane), but also all of the DNA, RNA, and other structures that are found in even the simplest one celled creatures.
So consider this: the Hebrew word (often romanized as "bara") that is translated in Genesis 1:1 as "created" could just as easily have been translated as "organized" or "made". The word for God (ALYHM, or in English Elohim) is translated in other places as "the mighty" (and may be a plural at that), and the word for "heavens" might be closer in "atmosphere" in meaning than any religious abode of a supernatural deity. So the translation for Genesis 1:1 could also be something like this: "Beginning: the mighty organized the earth and the atmosphere".
So look at the creation theory with this idea in mind: Start with just what is stated in Genesis 1:1 and follow the logical hypothesis: if a being or beings exists (with some type of super gravity generator/repulor system perhaps?) a)the power to push together planet size chunks of matter into an appropriately small area that their inherent gravity pulls them together, b)surround the completed "planet size chunk of matter" with the right combination of gaseous and liquid elements (primarily nitrogen and H20) to support carbon/water based life forms, c) stick said chunk of rock at the appropriate distance from a stable, right size sun with the appropriate energy spectra. Now substitute the idea of "creative periods" as a translation rather than "days", which implies a 24 hour Terran time period.
Which is harder to believe, that a planet could be organized, and populated with life forms, or that life somehow began in the hot rocks and transitioned to cellular organism, and on up through Darwinian evolution, etc.? In the end, neither is provable.
<Sarcasm mode off>
...Open Source isn't the only answer -- but it's almost always a better value than the alternatives...
...this is exactly what my teacher in bio teacher in highschool taught us 4 years ago... what a "new theory"!
And the award for "Best Attempted Use Of Science To Argue Against Creation" goes to...
(opens envelope)
The people who site the second law of thermodynamics without understanding it or really even reading to the end of the law!
(The Kansas school board comes up to the podium)
Wow! This is so exciting. First I would like to thank Jesus. Then I would like to thank Isaac Newton, who is surely burning in Hell. And finally, what's a closed system?
Sorry folks. You are not a beautiful or unique snowflake. There is no heavenly father who loves you or watches over you. And when you die, you rot in the ground.
I'm out.
What ever happened to life starting in a garden?
-516
See...that wasn't very hard. If there was a god, none of those things would exist.
That doesn't follow at all. He might be a god of limited power, or an uncaring or apathetic god, for example. Lots of other possibilities too.
On the question of judeo-christian mythology's God being good or bad, see my favorite source for Bible quotes:
Landoverbaptist.com A real treasure...
The State is obviously doing very well these days, and it basically kills and steals.
Slashdot: Failed Car Analogies. Amateur Lawyering. Anecdote Battles.
and yet, you have presented no evidence to support your claims.
please - prove god exists.
The theory that (a) God exists is just as sound as the theory that existance is older than the sum of human memory & created through random chance.
Nope. A theory must explain the evidence, make testable predictions, and be falsifiable. "God exists" fails on the last two. Therefore, it is not a theory.
Evolutionists/Atheists have been and are still trying to disprove God's existence and have failed to do so.
Christians have been and are still trying to prove God's existence and have failed to do so. So, what was your point again?
"Quotation is a serviceable substitute for wit." --Oscar Wilde
"I for one believe that God has an incredible sense of humor, and created things like dinosaur fossils, and other tantalizing evidence, simply to mess with the minds of scientists."
Okay, now that's a relief. Up until now I had assumed that you were serious. Congratulations, IHBT. Show him what he's won, Vanna.
There is very little evidence and a lot of speculation when it comes to life beginning on Earth. There is just too much we don't know.
So why is it we are very interested and passionate about our origins? Why do evolution theories or creation stories peak our interest? Do you think that our origins define who we are and how we relate in this world? I think the answer in part is yes.
Don't believe me on absolute ethics? Then explain to me why it's considered unethicial to kill a living human child that will never be able to produce anything in society.
Offtopic, but I believe it deserves a response. It is unethicial to kill an "unproductive" child in part because it is very likely that child will produce something of value, even if indirectly. Many cures have been found by loving parents with "unproducing" kids. Had those children been put to death treatments and/or cures for some diseases may never have been found.
Maybe the child gives someone else a reason to produce. Maybe the child is able to produce something that you may not find valuable, but someone else does. Who gets to decide the definition of "productive", and how can you prove that the child will never be able to do it? That is why it is unethicial to kill an "unproductive" child.
The "first organisms" did not produce significant amounts of oxygen, and the atmosphere was a reducing atmosphere and environment (free hydrogen gas, hydrogen sulfide, etc). Even when the first oxygenic organisms arrived on the scene, it is believed to have taken a significant amount of time (I've never seen an estimate lower than millions of year) to produce enough oxygen to change the entire planet's atmosphere from reducing to something resembling today's conditions (nitrogen, oxygen, argon, a little carbon dioxide).
Therefore, the evolution of life almost certainly does NOT preculde another event occuring on primordial earth at all. Please get your science theories straight before posting off-the-hip.
-Microbiology Grad Student
The evidence for intelegent design is overwhelming, as is the evidence of Jesus being God.
OK, let's hear it.
Evolutionists/Atheists have been and are still trying to disprove God's existence and have failed to do so.
Evolutionists don't care if God exists or not, and the only atheists who try to disprove God's existence are very silly atheists, since it's an impossible task.
Ok, suppose I'm a follower of Christ, an apostle. I've seen him with my own eyes, listened to him speak. Good guy. Then the Romans kill him, nail him to a cross. So me and my buddies, we decide to steal the body and concoct this resurrection story. We know it's a fraud, but nobody else does, so we keep our day jobs and go around telling everybody what we've "seen." Some years later, I'm jailed. They're telling me I'm going to be killed. Would I be willing to die for something that I knew was fraudulent, because I was one of the guys who dreamed it up?
Not a chance. Yet, the apostles didn't exactly meet pleasant ends. It's one thing to die for something you truly believe in, but quite another for something you know to be false.
That, to me, is one piece of fairly compelling evidence, and it's supported by historical writing outside the Christian Bible.
I'm always doubting that God exists... but I've found, personally, that there's enough reason to ask myself "what if" and to entertain the possibility. The assumption here seems to be that Christianity (or any religion) is for simple-minded folks easily brainwashed by some big-haired televangelist that pronounces "God" with up to four syllables. I don't see it that way; faith is hard, and it's one possible consequence of asking some very interesting questions.
Science believes in what can be seen, whereas faith asks one to believe in that which cannot be seen. Which is the easy way out?
I'll concede that my beliefs may be entirely wrong. I wasn't there; I didn't personally witness the origin of life, and will never have the opportunity to do so.
I can say this with certainty: I have nothing to lose by believing, or at least trying my best to do so. If I die and there's no God, well, I'll never know it.
On the other hand, if there truly are eternal consequences for what we believe... if there's even the smallest chance... "what if..."?
Still want to cling to science? Try reading The Physics of Consciousness by Evan Harris Walker. It's not about religion but attempts to lay down a scientific foundation for consciousness. It's an interesting read, but more than what's in the pages, it may have you asking yourself questions that you've ignored for much of your life.
Evolution is just a theory.
I do not think that means what you think that means. For an explaination visit here or here.
hope your right!
I find that belief in God is as reasonable as believing in the existence of other minds. Alvin Plantinga, _God and Other Minds_.
Most scientists today have as a basic proposition "God does not exist." I simply include "God Exists" as a basic proposition needing no proof, because it's as obvious to me as the nose on anyone's face, it's natural reasoning. I don't lose any sleep, tossing and turning, worrying about how I can make an airtight proof to the skeptics that "God Exists." And I work from there.
Slashdot: Failed Car Analogies. Amateur Lawyering. Anecdote Battles.
True. But scientists strive to learn, and acknowledge their deficiencies. Religion does not. The key to religion is belief. That is what is convenient about religion - there is no way to prove or disprove God. So no, I haven't disproven there is a God - but it hasn't been proven to me that there is one. I believe that science and religion should be kept apart, but for some reason religious zealots fear science. After all, it has shown that there is a world beyond ours, and constantly strives to learn. That scares people who have only a belief to rely on.
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
Why should I care where life originated?
Life Originated Underwear
As you can imagine I was pretty confused for a second....
Most people would die sooner than think; in fact, they do.
In other words, "god" didn't do it the way he _should_ have done it (if indeed, he _did_ do it); therefore, he couldn't have done it. Is that your reasoning?
Slashdot: Failed Car Analogies. Amateur Lawyering. Anecdote Battles.
I remember that Star Trek TNG episode where Picard is taking back in time to the begning (when life was about to form), if I remember correctly that was under water (or in water?). If that doesn't prove it, I don't know what does!
Another reason star trek was way ahead of its time!
I think a lot of your questions about how evolution, cosmology, and the rest of science attempt to explain all sorts of phenomena (without resorting to a default "because of God") can be answered by visiting the Talk.Origins Archive.
If they can't be answered, there are some very helpful admins who answer most of the mail they receive with not only answers, but links to the source of the answers.
It's better than wading through the
Mordor...a magical, mythical land where women are more rare than dragons--but where every man would rather find a dragon
That's right. This theory, that, "The small compartments would have been formed in iron sulphide rocks near hot, hydrothermal vents on the sea floor, not in the atmosphere" was orriginaly posed as the doctorate thesis of / ">Dr. Everett Shock</a>, now working at Arizona State University.
This same work also sparked many of the current theories about the possibility of life on Mars.
No, I am not willing to accept my religious beliefs are wrong. BUT.... Even if they are wrong, and evolution is the answer ...
Why do you believe that the two (your religious beliefs and evolution) are mutually exclusive? Can't they both be true? As a Christian who believes that God created life on Earth through evolution, this (to me) seems the most plausible scenario given the evidence. And to be quite honest, you 6000-year-old-Universe types are making it awful hard on us. Even if you sincerely believe that, and I have a hard time believing that a lot of you do, you have to realize that you are in a small minority and you are holding the entire religion of Christianity up to ridicule. It is not fair that the whole of us should take hits for the transgressions of a few, but that is the way that it's working out.
Have you ever considered the possibility that God is not a trickster, and that He is not in the business of trying to fool His people, and that He gave us the brains and the inquisitiveness we have because He wants us to figure out the world around us? Have you ever considered the possibility that Genesis is meant to be allegorical and not literal? Have you ever considered the possibility that your hard-line stances on issues like this are leading people, in droves, away from Christ?
I don't mean to get off into a bunch of preaching on Slashdot, but this has bothered me for a long time. Non-Christians need to take note and realize that views such as those expressed by the parent are MINORITY VIEWS. These people do not speak for all of us, and it is a shame that so many apparently think otherwise. Christianity is not about shutting your brain off; in fact, it's quite the contrary. So please do not let yourselves be fooled by these people.
Well, this might be slightly off-topic (and I've never been moderated so I fear posting this...teetering on the brink of good and bad at neutral...I wonder if any moderation is better than none...wait, now I'm really getting off topic...), but the whole chicken/egg debate isn't really an "answerable" question (since no one has proof, but just theories and evidence supporting theories), but more of a question that answers what you believe. Granted that most theories involve evolution (as this article does...does that bring me back on topic? =D) in some manner (in which case the egg does indeed come first), but there is still the theory of creation (in which case the chicken comes first). Granted that most people would lean towards egg (as even some creationists believe that evolution is what God used to create (if you take a look at creation and evolution, the ordering of life is remarkably similar)) but just because the majority think egg, doesn't mean rule out the chicken. Just some food for thought.
You're here. Aren't you?
Jonahweb.com has stuff.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
of hydraulic compression in underwater sex.
I did it with Sally in 11th grade in the pool. Thank god life did not originate underwater in that case.
wow, either that's a very good spoof site or american christians are even scarier than i thought
hope it's the former
i would have read the article to post intelligently, but i couldn't even get through the description posted on the home page... about 10 errors in the first sentance alone!!
do the editors not have edit ability to edit or do they choose to leave the mistakes so as not to misquote the poster?!
MARIJUANA, SHROOMS, X: ONLINE?! - E
Keep Looking.
--God
And just for the record "God was the Creator" is infact the default hypothesis that we came up with from the "evidence".
:)
It's the default hypothesis that we came up with when we were chasing down wooly mammoths and scribbling on the walls of caves. The rest of the world has moved on since then; you're welcome to join us if you'd like.
Evolutionists/Atheists have been and are still trying to disprove God's existence and have failed to do so.
WTF is an "evolutionist?" What's the matter, do you call people who accept gravity a "gravitist?" These are just words invented by fundamentalists to stir up hatred against people who are well-versed in modern science. Many of these people well-versed in modern science are Christians, by the way, and the majority of Christians have no problem with evolution. Sorry about that.
Science has a rich tradition of total credulity and of missing things and of incomplete knowledge (sounds mostly human). So what else would be new? We're descendants in that tradition.
Slashdot: Failed Car Analogies. Amateur Lawyering. Anecdote Battles.
Perhaps someone else can further develop our understanding by listing some of the genes which are involved in uric acid storage or uptake via the placenta, if these things are known at this time. If they are not, they soon will be.
mhackarbie
Building a better ribosome since 1997
So you're saying that science is far below religion because scientists can't make up stories and call them true? When you can show me God, and evidence that he created the human race (again, your story-book bible does not count) I'll start going to church. I've yet to see creationists try to prove anything. Remove head from sphincter, as they say.
Also, science does NOT ignore the consciousness - even basic highschool psychology courses cover it.
For my money, to read the other argument, you can't do better than Jack Chick http://www.chick.com
That is some DARK stuff. Cannibalism, broken necks, violent plane crashes. Gotta love it.
--- Jump!! Fire!! Bullet time!! - Lego version of the Matrix
Everybody knows that life was engineered by some great omnipotent alien force that seeded all the planets in this galaxy. That's why all the aliens on star trek look the same....
>Most scientists today have as a basic proposition "God does not exist."
Where did you ever get that idea? The majority of scientists are in fact religious people. Just because they don't use them as an explaination for everything doesn't mean they can't believe.
-- Give me ambiguity or give me something else!
:) Surely you can understand that such vast amounts of evidence cannot be sumerized in a few sentances on a message board; However, if you are interested in the evidence. I would suggests the answers in genesis website as well as the book "More than a Carpenter" by Josh Mcdowell. There are many other books on the subject of appologetics as well. C.S Lewis is one auther you might want to look at.
I just have a few questions for you religious-types.
Where did God come from? He cannot just always "be" if he was, then whats saying that the universe isn't always just "there".
With what did he create the universe? Everybody knows that you can't get something from nothing. Even if there is a God, there is no way he/she could just make matter, it's as absurd as me stomping on the ground and saying that I just destroyed matter.
I know that neither creationism nor evolutionism can exaplian the basic questions that i have just asked, I was simply trying to inform religious-types that God does not have all the answers, nor does he exist.
I have other questions such as "Why is America clearly a Christian country despite its constition?"
basically, i look at the belief of God as just a guide to how people should live their lives, and the claim that he/she created us all just so you will follow the commandments.
Slash-for-Thought
Known about this for the last four billion years. ;-)
:-/
Truthfully, this isn't new. There was a study done several years ago where a tank full of water and chemicals was treated to several large zaps of electricity (sorry - can't find a link to it). The results were the basic building blocks of life. So this isn't something new. It's already been proven.
Someone put a black hole in my pocket and now I'm broke.
How exactly?
--Joey
The title is rather silly as presently stated. It's pretty much never been in contention that life originated underwater. What you guys mean is that it might have originated really deep underwater ...
cause chickens don't live underwater dipshit
http://www.icr.org/pubs/imp/imp-242.htm Come again? Creationists don't try to prove anything? How about appologetics? It's all about proving and defending the faith.
interesting as new oragin theorys can be, isnt the real question "where did anything come from, and why". it looks to me like people think for some reason that an atom that just appears out of nothing makes more since than everything just appearing out of nothing, niether is logical. to me the idea of a creator makes more since, considering "atoms just appear, atoms by chance evolve into life, life evolves into diffrent people and animals etc..." or "the creator made everything at one time for a reason and with a plan". what does everyone else think?
with God there is no time. with out time it is not hard to always be, because always is a time related term. With out time, a second could be 10000 years or -10000 years. If a being was able to move in and out of time them it could exist in all times, aka always existing.
OK, "Most scientists on /."
Slashdot: Failed Car Analogies. Amateur Lawyering. Anecdote Battles.
Once you (as in, a subset of the collective society) gain enough power (such as military force), you can pretty much do what you want, however allowing everyone to kill and steal would collapse society completely.
STOP MISUSING APOSTROPHES, YOU MORONS!!!
There is as much evidence--that is, legal evidence, not scientific evidence--for the existance of God as there is that there was a King Richard of England who fought in a war called the Crusades.
Which one? I find your claim hard to believe considering that there are literally thousands of different variations of 'gods' that have been worshipped throughout human history.
STOP MISUSING APOSTROPHES, YOU MORONS!!!
I simply include "God Exists" as a basic proposition needing no proof, because it's as obvious to me as the nose on anyone's face, it's natural reasoning.
The nose on anyone's face (well, apart from Michael Jackson) can be rather easily demonstrated to the satisfaction of most anyone. How can you do the same for the existence of a 'god'?
Of course, 'nose' itself has a pretty common accepted definition. I can ask several different people to define 'god' and I will likely receive several different (and sometimes contradictory) answers, so you'd better start with a concrete definition of what you mean by 'god'.
STOP MISUSING APOSTROPHES, YOU MORONS!!!
lets say a being could live outside of time. then that being could easily always exist. now lets say that being could create things, or anything at will. that would enable the being to create the universe with time, so what would to him be created instantly may not seem as such for the creations. for us what is instant to God could be an infinite ammount of time, or a few seconds. Since an infinite ammount of time would be instant to God, than to us he could exist forever. we dont know everything so what may seem a random occurance to you could easily have good reason to God.
not that the absence of evidence of the existence of ETs proves much. But should the absence of evidence for the existence of a supreme being prove less?
"the best safety of the frontier...will be secured by total annihilation of the few remaining indians" L Frank Baum 1890
But if you want to appeal to the perfection of biological design as evidence of an intelligent designer, it is hard to get around the fact that it simply doesn't actually look all that perfect. By human standards, a great deal of biology looks clumsy and awkward--yet perfectly reasonable in the context of evolution.
Pig bones, eh? You should put more effort into your trolls.
Hmm, why do you quote 'they'? Who do you think I meant?
why run from Vincenzo?
as a fairly young species humanity
what is that even supposed to mean? do u pretend to know the end of the universe? what to say it wont end NOW(gotcha =P) or tomorrow or anytime at all.
I'm going to ignore the fact that you don't understand what a "theory" in natural science even is, because none of you people do. It's a waste of time. The fact remains that practical applications of evolutionary biology, like it or not, have produced tangible and useful results. Frothing at the mouth and wildly waving the Bible hasn't produced new cures for diseases, nor has it helped produce more efficient crops, nor has it helped generate more cleanly-burning fuels. When you people have more to show for yourselves than a bunch of sparkly stained-glass windows, let us know, okay?
Until then, we're not holding our breath, and the world is going to move forward whether you like it or not. Capice?
that's a pretty fair assumption. you probably don't think so, though, because you only go to gay restaurants and only see gay male waiters.
the egg from which the animal that we could say was the first true chicken, was laid by a non-chicken (though extremely close to being a true chicken). The first chicken's genetic sequence was a mixture of both it's parents genes (perhaps with a mutation or two)that defined it as the first of it's kind.
:)~
The species Kfc sativa
It's parents would be so proud(to use a anthropomorphization) to have there child become
the taste sensation it did.
In a biological sense the chicken is a fantastically successful species, it has large numbers of individuals and there continued existance is assured while humans love to eat them, we can't let them go extinct as they are just too damn tasty.
Hehe... this is even funnier than http://www.skepticsannotatedbible.com/
Shameless Plug: Owner of linuxscreenshots.com
The chicken the laid the egg that was 100% chicken, was herself 99% chicken and, say, 1% teradactyl. Doens't matter what it was, but the egg that it laid was the final bit of morph into chicken that the egg came before the chicken.
Don't eat your soul to fill your belly.
conesus.com
Underground
Really? Hydrothermal vents are reasonably postulated to have been around since not long after the formation of the planet. The forming planet was hot. The oxidizing atmosphere is not favorable by any means for life unless there are biological mechanisms in place to reduce the ozidation damage. Moreover, the chemical energy based on the metabolism of hydrogen sulfide utilized by the vent dwellers, as well as the thermal energy available to them, surely entails less complex energy conversion mechanisms than the photosynthetic apparatus. You may want to reconsider what are your least complex "favorable living conditions." Hydrothermal vents are not "favorable" to you or me, but neither is our oxidizing atmosphere "favorable" to the vent dwellers.
I guess your sentence above is correct, but in the wrong sense.
Let's second-guess the work of the Design Firm of God & Son, just as a thought experiment. What would you change?
I'll toss out a few, just for starters:
-- No appendix! Never heard a good word about it.
-- How about a little chlorophyll in the skin, so we have to eat less, and can hold our breath underwater longer.
I think slashdot began underwater...
> What's novel about the theory in the article is that it proposes that living cells were preceded by nonliving inorganic cells.
Okay, am I the only one who is seeing a contradiction here? How can a ``cell" -- which, ignoring the existence of viruses, is the building block of life -- be considered ``nonliving" or ``inorganic"? That's about as nonsensical as saying ``atheist Christian".
And the article pointed to doesn't clear up this odd phrase. Are we talking about living objects, inanimate objects, or a concept so complex the journalists are doomed to garble any explanation?
If it's the later, can someone offer a URL to the original research so those of us whose bullshit meters are beeping at full volume can figure out just what this discovery really is about?
Geoff
I think I see a trend here. Maybe for them it really would be easier to muzzle the entire internet than to produce p
I would suggests the answers in genesis [answersingenesis.org] website
:)
There's nothing on answersingenesis except a bunch of stuff about them building a museum.
What happened? I seem to remember there being a lot more, even though it was all wrong.
Oh, and look at the tag line at the top of the page: "Upholding the authority of the Bible from the very first verse!" These are not the words of a group interested in doing real science. These are the words of people who think they already KNOW the answer and don't want to hear any argument.
Landover Baptist is NOT a real church! The whole site is a deceptive fraud and a TROLL! The site's "church" does not represent any real form of Christianity. It distorts Scripture; Christ's central message of love and grace is turned inside out. The disgruntled creator's intent is clearly anti-Christian.
You're right, evolution is Not a theory. It doesn't even qualify as science fiction. Evolution is outright fantasy.
Who is this article trying to win over? Its widely held by people who believe in evolution that life started underwater. The primordial soup references aren't just cute analogies. In my entire life, I've never come across any serious proposal that life developed in the air first.
The old story:
A bit after the beginning, there were some self-replicating molecules. Some of them might have been proteins, and some of them might have been nucleic acids, and I suppose some of the might have been something we haven't thought of. The molecules that were really good at self-replication did it quite a bit, and there got to be more of them, especially when they had access to the necessary raw materials.
One day, or more likely on a large number of different days, a bunch of these self-replicating molecules all found themselves trapped together inside a sphere made of phospholipids floating in a puddle and started interacting in a synergistic kind of way.
The new story:
A somewhat shorter bit after the beginning, some basic molecules got spewed out of an ocean vent and all found themselves trapped together inside a sphere of rock at the bottom of the ocean. These basic molecules interacted a bit (thanks to their proximity) and formed some self-replicating molecules, which were of course trapped, too. The molecules that were really good at self-replication did it quite a bit, and there got to be more of them, which was easy because they had access to the raw materials they needed to self replicate (because said materials were, as we have said, trapped).
One day, or more likely on a large number of different days, a bunch of these self-replicating molecules all found themselves trapped together inside the same sphere of rock and started interacting in a synergistic kind of way. At some point they must have made their collective way into a phospholipid sphere, I suppose, or else our cell membranes would be made out of rock.
Please donate your spare CPU cycles to help fight cancer and other diseases
I read about this about 12 years ago - it was being called the "primordial sandwich" theory, as opposed to the primordial soup theory. It looks like slashdot is even later than usual with this one.
I can't help it - I'm a 19D.
http://www.syslab.ceu.hu/corliss/0-TitlePrefContAc k.html
http://www.syslab.ceu.hu/corliss/Nature.html
here's the link at nature.com: http://www.nature.com/nsu/021202/021202-3.html
without crack and other drugs, life wouldn't be the same... and so taht's why you should hit up this game, to test it out.
http://www.druglordsgame.com/index.php?ref=25218
Not only that, but in a closed system, order occurs spontaneously in some parts of that system in order to increase the total entropy of the system. For instance, put a salt of some sort into a water solution then put that water solution into a vacuum. The water will evaporate to fill the vacuum with vapor, leaving the solute to precipitate out as a crystalline solid. Crystals, as you know, are highly ordered...from solution to crystal is certainly decreasing entropy of the salt. However, the TOTAL entropy of the system increases as the liquid becomes less-ordered gas.
Life works the same way. An organism increases the unusable energy in a system (in the form of heat) while increasing and/or maintaining a certain level of order within the cell. Life, being that it is self-reproducing, would only have to arise once before it spread, being that life is an agent of entropy rather than an affront to it.
If not all sentients are human, couldn't it be possible that not all humans are sentient either?
Therefore, Eve was created from the same genetic material (except for a chromosome change [23rd pair???]) as Adam. Eve was technically a clone, with some minor GM work.
So if we go with the idea that there was NO distinct change in the two DNA structures, we are basically the product of some hardcore (technically speaking) incest.
Yet another reason why you really can't look at the bible in a scientific context.
Suchetha
learn from yesterday, plan for tomorrow, party tonight
or one out of three ain't bad
Both.
But then again, I could be wrong.
Obviously you didn't take much time with the site since it is impossible that you went over all the material in such a short amount of time. Perhaps you didn't notice the Q&A section which contains the bulk of what you are looking for. This also suggests that you
"think they(insert you) already KNOW the answer and don't want to hear any argument".
I also highly doubt you've taken a lot at the previously mentioned book.
"These are not the words of a group interested in doing real science. These are the words of people who think they already KNOW the answer and don't want to hear any argument."
The problem is that the same is true of those who believe in evolution. They claim to KNOW that God did not create the universe and that the universe was created by observable processes. Sure they are open to various different models of this, but the bottom line is it wasn't God. Creationists in the same manner are open to difference's in their models because it is impossible to determine the exact method of creation since the process is no longer observable (ie. we don't observe universes being created anymore), and there are some healthy disagreements among creation scientests, but the bottom line is it was God who created it. The question is who has the most compelling evidence?
who's really pushing bad science
How do you get a nonliving cell??? What characterizes a cell a cell, if not that it is a living system?
Besides, this `new' theory is not new. Not at all. I've learnt about those ideas like 10 years ago.
Again (and just to be nasty :p )
Before we argue about the origin of life, shouldn't we be able to define what life is first?
``L'imagination au povoir.''
Remember that chimps are VERY closely related, so we can lop of 98% of those combos. Then we take out all the variations that result in fatal alleles reducing it even farther (I dont and I doubt anyone has a statistic for this). The only upside to all those is that 2/3 of all offspring have some sort of mutation, not neccesarily even visible or noticible, but there.
I'm a Buddhist, there is no deity in Buddhism, in fact it's one of the oldest modern religions that just happens to not have deities. Anyway...
The Buddha noticed this trend 2600 years ago. He was a highly educated prince in India before becoming the Buddha (the first enlightened monk). He noticed people flocked to god out of fear. Native tribal people feared thunder and therefore proclaimed it was from god. They feared floods and flocked to gods in the hopes of protection. When you wisen up and build a damn, god is no longer necessary. This is simplified greatly but whatever.
Your observations are correct and have been observed by others for thousands of years.
Unfortunately, I don't see this as convincing evidence. All this "proof" states is that they believed the Jesus was God. There have been plenty of false messiah before, and plenty more afterwards. There's plenty of evidence of Jews allowing themselves to become martyrs for their own beliefs that God was not the same as Jesus. Plenty of Greeks died for their own gods, etc, etc. Martyrdom provides no actual proof of the existence of god, rather, it proves the devotion of those martyrs to their beliefs.
If not all sentients are human, couldn't it be possible that not all humans are sentient either?
They actually believe they can trace back all non-Africans to a single mother. The thinking is that all the humans that spread out to the rest of the world came from one tribe which made it to the Arabian Peninsula.
I was actually just thinking how surprised I was that the white-supremacist Christians haven't latched onto this. Then again that theory doesn't give them any ammo against the rest of the races...
There is, in fact, no evidence for Jesus being God. Jesus, as far as can be told, never claimed to be divine in any way at all. His somewhat elusive answer to Pilate about being the "King of the Jews" is of no help, as the Jewish idea of Messiah has always been first and foremost a political office, that of a person who would follow the rules set down in various Torahs, Talmuds, etc.
Jesus' divinity was not proclaimed until after his death, when Paul, reeling from the shock that the man who proclaimed the "Good News" died like a common criminal. All of the modern churches' thrology dates from Paul and later exegesis, not from Jesus.
Unfortunately, one can not prove God's existence; this is why it's known as faith.
I am a believer of momentum and curves.
Now, maybe the chemicals mostly _came_ from vents, but do we need to look so closely to them for primordial habitats? Wasn't there some other theory that touted certain kinds of clay as a good substrate for interesting molecular reactions?
According to the bible, our most recent common ancestors aren't Adam and Eve, but Noah and his family. If I remember correctly, Noah, his wife and their three sons with their wives survived the great flood. Altogether, that's eight people and five of them were not directly related.
The most interesting thing about this situation is that it's supposed to have happened only 4k-5k years ago. This means that all the differences we see between people, such as race, language and culture, came about in that time.
You break all the laws of physics and you seriously think there wouldn't be a price?
Life came from what used to be the centre of the universe not so long ago..earth just had the right conditions
Atleast that's what Fatboy Slim's "RIGHT HERE RIGHT NOW" video , portrays. It's a nice animation.. show's underwater uni-celled organisms evolve into fish into land blubbers into monkeys and finally into man... if you haven't seen it ,check it out... a crash course in evolution.
|/________
|\A|ALYS|
While we're at it, let's free everyone who was convicted of a crime based solely on physical evidence. After all, even though the guy left his bloody fingerprints on the murder weapon and his DNA matches the semen, no one was there to see it happen and we can't repeat it. We can, however, observe the evidence and determine which hypothesis it is most consistent with. We do the same thing with the creation of the universe and of life itself. On another note, plenty of Christians have little or no problems with the theories of the "atheistic cosmologists." Could it be because these "atheistic cosmologists" have come up with the theory that best explains the observed facts?
Materialism?
Such a misleaing word... What, do atheists only believe in what they can see with the unaided eye? No, I think not.
Naturalism?
Is God not natural? Is "natural" not by definition all that exists? If God exists, would God be unnatural?
Actually no - in the precambrian it's generally thought that it would be very difficult for life to survive on the surface. There was no ozone layer because there was no Oxygen(O2) as the former comes from the latter. And the statement that Oxygen is "damaging" is not at all true - granted, it harms some things, but obviously modern day life adapted to the Oxygen, while we still get sunburns from UV (and we wven have an ozone layer). However, I have heard some theories that suggest that the earliest life formed along the shore (for all the reasons Mr. Coward listed), and quickly migrated to the deeper ocean where it could survive much more easily due to the lack of UV Oh, and there's no reason to assume extremophiles didn't come first - they aren't any more "kooky" than any other life forms, they just survive in different environments than most other bacteria do.
Bah... you're lying. People don't have intercourse in hottubs. There's no lubrication!
People have sex NEXT to hottubs, where the juices doesn't wash away!
First off, this gave me a chuckle: "One of the implications of Martin and Russell's theory is that life on our planet, even on other planets or some large moons in our own solar system, might be much more likely than previously assumed."
I'd already been sold on the idea of life on our planet.
Anyway, a fascinating passage in the book "LIFE AT THE LIMITS: Organisms in extreme environments." (Cambridge University Press, 2002), describes the role tides might have played in the origin of life. This is certainly old news for some list members, but I know it will interest others.
Author David A. Wharton, a zoologist, recounts one famous experiment that sets the stage with the MIller experiment relayed in another thread. In 1953, Harvard grad student Stanley Miller and chemist Harold Urey, demonstrated in a bottle that gaseous mix of ammonia, methane, water vapor, and hydrogen gas forms complex organic molecules, including amino acids, when exposed to electricity. That's a young Earth's atmosphere,
with lightning. Subsequently, ultraviolet light was also found to work. This much a lot of us have seen in high school biology films and textbooks.
The problem was that many of the raw materials dusting down to earth from meteorites would have been in a weak solution in the ancient oceans -- a very thin primordial soup. Those basic compounds need to be bunched together to
form the complex molecules that are a step away from life. Miller argues that the most likely place that vital concentration would have occurred is on the clay and sand of shorelines, deposited by the tides. The effect would
have been even more dramatic a couple of billion years back: it seems a nearer moon made the tides 30 times more powerful than they are today.
Of course, the implication is that each year our tides are weakening. The moon slips about 1.6" away from us each year (go ahead -- calculate how much further away from you it is now than when you were born). If we're not swallowed up by
our star turning into a red giant by then, that means eventually the moon will be a far enough away that it will match the Earth's rotation (also slowing) so that both a day and a month will come in at 47 days. In that case there
will be no tidal friction, according to physicists.
Anyway, I was just stirred by that vision of tides acting as midwife to life. There are certainly other theories out there that don't rely on the tides (some call for a hotter Earth, others deep ocean thermal vent chemistry, and
even the lattice structure of ice to concentrate compounds), but I wanted to share this one given our intimacy with this elemental force.
Erik
I'll be happy to grant that it is possible that the atheistic cosmologists have come up with some good explanations.
However, I would submit to you that the currently proposed theories about the start of the universe carry far less pull than your analogy would indicate.
With respect to the Christians who have no problem with these theories, many people don't give any thought to these sorts of things and might object if they understood the theological implications of the cosmologists' theories.
Respectfully,
Anomaly
But Herr Heisenberg, how does the electron know when I'm looking?
> our most recent common ancestors aren't Adam and Eve, but Noah and his family.
Unless Noah and his family were created like Adam and Eve, they had to come from somewhere. The assumption of this thread is that everyone's geneology stems from Adam and Eve.
From their Terms of Service:
"The Landover Baptist Church is a complete work of fiction. It is a satire/parody."
Of course, as to American Christians, especially Baptists and the entire Religious Right, they are most definitely scary.
Well again, science is not generally about proving something to be true beyond all doubt.
It is a matter of proposing solutions to explain the data, and disproving those that contradict the data.
The claim, "it is more likely that God exists than that the universe came to be without God acting," is very much a testable claim, or at least a claim about which we can intelligently reason. Of course it requires that we define God precisely, and attribute to God only those qualities minimally sufficient to provide the best explanation for the data, but who would suggegst that we do otherwise?
Which one? How can you ask that, when any sane person knows the answer is Quetzalcoatl.
I don't care where you start. I only assumed two genetically distinct initial ancestors. Heck, even that assumption may be flawed if I was trying too hard to follow Genesis 1, which implies that Eve was formed from Adam's tissue. Presumably she was basically a clone of Adam, genetically modified (at the very least) to be female.
But I posted my analysis not to defend Adam and Eve, but to make the very specific, very hypothetical point out that there is quite signficant variation in the gene pool even if you start with just two parents.
The fact that I did this at the chromosomal level instead of the gene level gives numbers that are very conservative---as was the assumption that there are no mutations.
Other people have pointed out that there are sub-chromosomal issues, possible gene exchanges, and so forth, but frankly that only serves to increase the variation. (And I would have eliminated such effects in my assumptions anyway had I known about them. I don't claim to be a genetecist.)
Other people suggested that shared genetic information reduces the variation, but they don't change my numbers. My numbers are valid as long as entire chromosomes are distinct... In other words, each pair of chromosomes could differ by only one or two genes, and my numbers would still be valid.
Since we cannot observe and repeat the universal creation process, we cannot subject it to the scientific method.
This argument is somewhat flawed... it doesn't take into account the option of indirect evidence and observation.
By that reasoning, when I walk into a room I've never been in before and see that the light is on, I can't conclude that the light was turned on at some point. Granted, I can never be 100% sure, but I'm pretty close, because I have indirect evidence that can be repeatedly shown. I can use the scientific method to prove that lights must be turned on to shed light, and thus assume that the light was turned on before I entered the room.
A simple analysis of the book "Where did I come from" will clear this up for you.
I entirely agree with alcmena. I wouldn't say I believe in an absolute moral (actually in a sense I do, but not in the context of this discussion) that killing is always wrong just because its killing, but I would say that society loses a potential with every death, and that potential is almost always more valuable than the resources that might be saved by killing.
While this may be literally true, you are to some extent quibbling with semantics... I think we all understood that the original poster was referring to the christian god... this kind of statement sort of gets in the way of real argumentation
ATN, I'll have you know, I probably spent 45 minutes to an hour reading that web site, and I didn't find a single argument that didn't depend on either something like "The bible says its true so it is" or "scientists are wrong." I admit I haven't read the book, but telling us to read a specific book that isn't freely available online is a copout - it gives you an excuse to not answer arguments. So could you just give us a few reasons on how you can prove the christian god exists. That's what you claimed you could do from the get go.
for historical reasons (which has generated alot of hysterical reasoning).
But it doesn't apply to evolution, anyway, as it describes the operation of a closed system, while evolution operates in an open system.
But then later claims these "theories" were actually hypotheses:
Suddenly their idea is a "theory" even though there is no more evidence that it is correct than for several competing ideas of cell evolution. Of course, among actual scientists, a "theory" is supposed to be the term for a hypothesis that has been demonstrated by empirical evidence to be the most accurate and predictive explanation for an event or set of events.
It's this kind of sloppy use of terms that leads some folks to promote their "theory" of Intelligent Design as equivalent to the Theory (its just a theory) of Evolution.
Maybe NOT!
If the PROTOCHICKEN that laid the first CHICKEN EGG was 99.999% CHICKEN, and the only change that was needed to become 100% CHICKEN was a slight DNA change, caused, maybe, by UV radiation, then the PROTOCHICKEN would have spontaniously become CHICKEN before the EGG was even laid.
So there. Chickens 1 eggs 0
---Most scientists today have as a basic proposition "God does not exist."---
That's simply slanderous. Basic logic here: lacking the proposition "God exists" is NOT the same thing as holding the proposition "God does not exist."
Besides, scientists operate under no such proposition. What they try to do is explain things by reference to things we can actually understand and demonstrate.
---I find that belief in God is as reasonable as believing in the existence of other minds. Alvin Plantinga, _God and Other Minds_.---
How so? I can't say I was convinced by Plantinga's argument, because the argument for god requires several more layers of abstraction and interpretation than does the assumption that other people have minds (in part because "mind" can be operationalized in regards to other human minds, while "god" cannot). Can you explain why you found Plantinga's argument convincing, or even why the existence of god is obvious.
---in the case for the theory that believes in God's non-existence, the ones who say, "God doesn't exist" are the ones that have taken on 100% of the burden of proof.---
True... but very few people need to bother with claiming that "God does not exist" when "I don't believe God exists" does just as well, and incurrs no burden of proof. I don't have any reason to run around thinking "God doesn't exist!": I just don't have any good reason to run around thinking that God exists either. That means that if you demand I authenticate a proposition that relies upon God's existence, I cannot do it, and the burden of proof lies squarely on you.
I don't think that it gets in the way at all. If he or she is asserting the Christian God, then he or she should be specific. If not, then he or she should be reminded that the Christian God is just one of many thousands of deities in which I and many others lack belief.
STOP MISUSING APOSTROPHES, YOU MORONS!!!
---laws win out over theorys.---
Yes, but not necessarily over theories. Theories and laws are not even the same sorts of things to compare. Laws are consistent regularities in the behavior of the universe. Theories, on the other hand, are large bodies of explanation. Laws don't explain things: theories explain (often by using laws as references). So, saying that "laws win out over theories" is a bit like saying "words win out over sentances." In other words, it doesn't make a whole lot of sense. Anyway, as I'm sure everyone's already told you, the Second Law is not in any sense in contradiction with evolutionary theory. Indeed, few creationists make this argument anymore, because it's pretty universally understood as lousy argument.
Damn, the point of the research is NOT whether life originated in air or water! The point is that cells would have to be formed first, before self-replicating molecules had had a chance to be created! This title is very misleading.. wake up timothy!
I miss my rubber keyboard.(Homepage)
---Which is harder to believe, that a planet could be organized, and populated with life forms, or that life somehow began in the hot rocks and transitioned to cellular organism, and on up through Darwinian evolution, etc.? In the end, neither is provable.---
Before we get into provability, we should note that only one of those options actually "explains" anything, unfortunately. The first option uses passive voice about the very sorts of actions that we want explained in the first place. You can't compare evolution (a theory of how) to creation (a theory of who). At least abiogenesis provides us with some testable hypothesises for its plausibility.
Just a point of interest, but how many people here on slashdot are actually qualified to discuss evolutionary theory and the beginnings of life? Even more to the point, how many are qualified to responsibly moderate this discussion?
... :)
Of the +4/+5 moderated posts here, how many of the posters have read some links on the web (and we all know how reliable these are) and now consider themselves an expert on the subject?
oh wait, I forgot where I am for a second
"Because it's there." - George Mallory, when asked why he wanted to climb Mt Everest, March 18, 1923 (New York Times)
Queue "Fuck the Creationists" by MC Hawking!
They call their bullshit science like the word could give them cred,
if them bitches be scientists then cap me in the head.
We can neither love nor pity nor forgive. If you make a slip in handling us you die!
is that most US citisens thinks there are a god. Yes, even my GF does.. and I still love her, strange enough...
For everybody who played star control 2 this question is already answered long ago :)
Rembo.
That a living cell is defined as a cell that contains genetic properties (i.e: ones that are carried on to the next generation), thus allowing evolution and other properties of life to form.
The non-living cells would then be micro-mechanisms that contain some of the functionality of living cells, but not genetic properties, and as such they are not "alive", cannot evolve and cannot pass qualities to a "next generation". These non-living cells, however, could be great platforms for living cells to be created "in" (or in place of?).
(Whoops... I hit reply before remembering to insert the silly message above...)
Absolutely. Which is why I get pissed when someone's comment to a scientific article about searching for the origins of creation is "Read Genesis 1:1". The Bible has nothing to do with science, so people shouldn't pretend that it does.
I agree with what you say, and many scientists will as well, but the Christians will argue that point. That is why they want to teach religion in science class. I don't think any scientist would have a problem with people learning about religion, but DON'T try and pass it off in science classes as scientific.
Religious fanatics creep me out, no matter what their basis of faith is. Funny how Christians want their ideas of the origin of life to be taught in schools, but they would balk at the idea of other religions teaching their ideas of creation.
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
To follow teachings based on old writings done by sheperds is a sign of a bright intelligence.
Moreso if one denies any facts that undermine those teachings and ignores all the contradictions poured in those teachings' wisdom.
I agree with the original poster, most religious people need to put to sleep their critical thinking (i.e. become stoopid) to be able to fit such ludicrous claims as religion does with daily life.
There may be stupid people that is also very nice, but that does not mean they are not stupid.
Examples:
Osama bin Laden (ha! the Quoran says one should not commit suicide, nevertheless I train suicide bombers).
The Pope (no to contraceptives. Intimate relations are only permissible if they have the purpose to procreate).
US religious right (abortion=murder).
I could go on and on, but religous people become so predictible that you can come with examples of your own I am sure.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
That is all tired.
If it was not for the use of Evolution as a scientific tool many people today will be sick and starving.
Google for AIDS adn mutation and have fun.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Of course, that is based on the philosophical "law of causation," which leaves the materialist with the "uncaused cause" problem.
If the material universe (in one form or another) has existed for eternity, then shouldn't it have equilibrated before now?
If it was subject to somewhat different "laws" before the big bang, how can we hope to guess what happened pre-big-bang?
But Herr Heisenberg, how does the electron know when I'm looking?
I think that we agree on many many points.
Sadly, I believe that you would perceive me to be one of those fanatacis that "creep you out."
With respect to your assertion about not passing religion off in science class, I would suggest that many atheistic scientists cling to their naturalistic philosophy with religious fervor, and that many times what is called science is actually atheistic philosophy class.
Please understand that I believe strongly in science - true science - the pursuit of knowledge. The majority of the scientific giants on whose shoulders we stand today were devout followers of Jesus Christ.
Being a devout follower of Christ is not contradictory to science, but rather gives a philosophical framework that can be followed to persue knowledge.
The idea that an intelligent designer created the universe and life according to a plan provides a model whereby the idea of studying life can show us the design that He used.
Science changes its understanding of the facts frequently, sometimes in large and fundamental measures. Recently cosmologists discovered planets much larger than they had ever seen before, and their very existence invalidated many many assumptions and theories about planetary formation.
The fact that scientific endevours are undertaken by fallible humans means that our pride and prejudice can interfere with our pursuit of pure science. It can also interfere with our study and understanding of philosophy or religion.
Putting scientists to death who contradict "official" religious teaching is an example of such interference.
Regards,
Anomaly
PS - God loves you and logs for relationship with you.
But Herr Heisenberg, how does the electron know when I'm looking?
I think you're a little confused as to what they mean by this. "Mitochondrial Eve" was not, in her lifetime, significant in any way. She's only so in retrospect: in the hindsight that all other lineages from her generation eventually happened to die out.
Which is assuming that all other lineages existed, it's also possible that this supports the genesis account of creation.
As other lines perhaps die out, a new "Mitochondrial Eve" could be, conceptually, crowned. That there must be such an individual at any given time is a mathematical certainty (you can reason it strickly from logic alone), but its not always the same individual, and it isn't the case that this individual's children only bred with each other.
There is no mathematical certainty at all actually, math won't tell you with any certainty that a family tree of 'unrelated' people will eventually reach a universal mother. The probability, all things being equal, is that a you will eventually find a number of different trees, each with their own, unique 'eve'. The only way following up on these 'eve's will eventually converge is if EVERYONE has a single common maternal ancestor. Eveolutionary theory general predicts this to not happen, period. Even tribal migration has one or two seperate mothers. The odds of a 'new' line of mutations being propagated by a single maternal ancestor is very hard to swallow from any evolutionary explanation. The pure fact of the matter is that any significant mutation from a common maternal ancestor would be very improbable to reach the level of dominance that mankind has. That one individual in an entire species would be the only one who's offspring survived is as improbable as those offspring flourishing as mankind has. Could such evidence fit in evolution? Yes, but just how likely is such an occurance? Could it likely have happened in the last million years? It's not exactly crazy to think maybe mitochondrial eve supports the Genesis account.
unlike making woman from a spare rib or creating the world in 6 days, right?
rubbish.
it is not possible to prove that something does not exist. anyone with half a brain would realise that.
but since your brain has obviously been hijacked by the god squad, free thought is not something open to you.
My sarcasm is specifically limited to the fact that the poster immediately called a "religious" viewpoint a fantasy instead of unprovable (at least at present, anyway) when the so-called science has an almost impossible level of proof as well.
The second point I was trying to make was that "creation" theory does not necessarily require 100% compliance with the English translation of old Hebrew religious documents.
The ability to do terraforming is at present science fiction or even fantasy (not having any terraformable planets with strike range of current transportation technologies doesn't help), but even at our current level of scientific understanding if there was an appropriate, lifeless planet with earth-like attributes close enough to reach with some type of inter-stellar ark (with the destination planet having similar atmosphere, solar insolation, salty oceans, etc.), it would not take all that many years to convert that planet into a living biosphere.
So "creation" can also be considered a valid explanation of "how" it was done, with mention of the "who" did it as part of the same story.
...Open Source isn't the only answer -- but it's almost always a better value than the alternatives...
"Unfortunately, I don't see this as convincing evidence. All this "proof" states is that they believed the Jesus was God. There have been plenty of false messiah before, and plenty more afterwards. There's plenty of evidence of Jews allowing themselves to become martyrs for their own beliefs that God was not the same as Jesus. Plenty of Greeks died for their own gods, etc, etc. Martyrdom provides no actual proof of the existence of god, rather, it proves the devotion of those martyrs to their beliefs."
That would be a fair argument if he was saying they died based on what they believed. But he stated clearly that they died based on what they said they had *seen*.
Uh, no. There is much more proof of King Richard's existence.
First, I have abundant proof of the existence of the class of phenomena - human beings - to which King Richard belonged. I have no such evidence of the existence of omnipotent dieties, the class to which the Christian god would belong. (I'm assuming from your sig that by "God" you mean the Christian diety.)
Second, if I assume that all the available reports of King Richard are more or less true, they fit; if I assume they are mistakes or hallucinations or fabrications, I've got a very big puzzle on my hands - a huge conspiracy? Mass hallucination?
If I assume that all the available reports of the Christian god are more or less true, not only don't fit each other (is this an angry or loving diety? how to I reconcile the Quakers with Oral Roberts? not to mention all the biblical contradictions), they contradict equally reliable reports about Jewish, Islamic, Hindu, Shinto, Buddhist, et cetera deities; while if I assume they are instances of mistaking subjective mystical experiences for objective phenomena, I can explain all of them consistently.
It's also impossible to prove that there are not invisible miniature Elvis clones living in my walls and stealing my socks. That doesn't mean that it's a hypothesis that should be seriously considered.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
It's evidence of their belief, yes. But it's hardly unprecidented or all that extra-ordinary to find people willing to die for their chosen deity or religious leader - indeed, right now you've got Falung Gong members being persecuted in China, and only a few years ago we had the Heaven's Gate folks who first castrated, then killed, themselves.
Yes, you do. First, according to some religions, if you choose the wrong set of beliefs, you're hosed. Choose to follow Zoroaster but it turns out Yaweh was the right pick? Lake of Fire for you, my friend. You might have gotten off lighter if you've picked None of the Above than chosen a false god.
Second, choosing to behave irrationally is not a good habit to develop for the rest of your life.
Third, the faith that you pick may very well require or suggest a lifestyle based on delaying gratification or happiness until after death...which given the lack of evidence for an afterlife, makes Pascal's Wager a sucker's bet.
Don't get me wrong - I'm all in favor of the mystical experience. Just don't confuse it with objective fact.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
---The second point I was trying to make was that "creation" theory does not necessarily require 100% compliance with the English translation of old Hebrew religious documents.---
Indeed, it doesn't require compliance with ANY story. But it matters what stories are plausible and testable. It also matters that any creations that require "whos" then simlpy require explanation for the origin of the "whos."
So are you. For even bothering to respond (like this... though I'm sure that I'm not really an idiot... not when it counts...)
From a burden of proof standpoint, the person who never heard of God is no different than the one who has heard of the idea and doesn't believe it. You don't add any extra burden of proof to me by stating theories in my presence that I don't agree with. It wasn't a "rejection of God" until someone else proposed the existence of god.
Don't label something "offtopic" unless you know the topic well enough to tell what's on topic.
That tired old argument depends on the false premise that people only believe things that are true. Fervent belief does not equate to proof. If it did, then there must have really been a spaceship behind the Hale-Bopp comet that came to take the souls of the Heaven's Gate cultists away. After all, they believed so strongly they killed themselves in anticipation of the spaceship.
Don't label something "offtopic" unless you know the topic well enough to tell what's on topic.
You have are argueing agaisnt a false effigy of the atheist stance, which is NOT the positive claim that God doesn't exist but rather the claim that non existence is the default hypothesis to use with when no compelling evidence has been observed to sway one's self.
This is the way sane people treat EVERY OTHER QUESTION OF WHETHER OR NOT A THING EXISTS other than god. For some reason people treat that one question differently than every thing else. An atheist simply chooses not to make that schism in his thought patterns.
Don't label something "offtopic" unless you know the topic well enough to tell what's on topic.
Wrong. King Richard is alleged to be a human being. I have personally witnessed many other examples of human beings. King Richard is alleged to be a King of England. I have witnessed England. Today we have evidence that England currently has a monarchy, if only a ceremonial one. Thus the class of things King Richard is alleged to have been is a class of things that have already been demonstrated to exist in other forms. Not so for God.
Don't label something "offtopic" unless you know the topic well enough to tell what's on topic.
Even specifying "the Christian God" isn't anywhere near specific enough. One needs to describe a being in enough theological detail to actually relate it to the world in a concrete and operational way so that we can consider what claims might need to be verified.
I work in Software QA, so I am constantly solving problems. When I run into a particularly tough one, I have learned the following: Ask yourself what the root assumption is, and make sure that it is correct. I have found that this is a great tool for solving all kinds of problems, in work and in life.
The root assumption with "Creation" is that there is a thing doing the creating, and doing it with some plan in mind. Those things are unprovable. If you approach science with that in mind, of course a lot of things will fit into place. Evolutionary science is based on a theory as well, but it is a theory based on observation. You are right that it is based on human obversation, and therefore open to error. But I prefer to believe in the observable and the provable.
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
But origins can neither be observed nor proven. We are left with speculation based on the evidence that we have.
In situations such as this (a possible parallel is forensic examination of a crime scene) we are left with collection of data and speculation about how that data came to be in that location in that particular arrangement.
The data could support many possible explanations, and I believe that we should use our intellect to sort through it and find the explanation that best fits the facts.
Having observed the facts - the complexity and apparent order involved in life in the universe, the data-richness of the RNA/DNA interplay, the utter improbability of this happening according to chance, and the concept of entropy as applied to the closed system we call the universe, my best explanation is that there is an intelligent designer.
You may choose to disagree, but it's not merely based on a mindless acceptance of Genesis 1.
Respectfully,
Anomaly
But Herr Heisenberg, how does the electron know when I'm looking?
Nope. A theory must explain the evidence, make testable predictions, and be falsifiable. "God exists" fails on the last two.
"existance is older than the sum of human memory & was created through random chance" fails on the last two as well.
If we were to find a rock on Mars, engraved in pefect English, which said "I created all that there is in the year -1800 BC, signed God", or some other obvious proof, it would be discarded as either a human hoax or as an alien prank. It would not falsify the "no god" theory.
Therefore, it is not a theory.
By the scientific term, no. But in the colloquial sense, it sure as hell is. Common language lets "theory" stand for any idea that can explain observed facts.
Which one? I find your claim hard to believe considering that there are literally thousands of different variations of 'gods' that have been worshipped throughout human history.
There have been thousands of different ideas of what God is, and even more ways to worship Him. But many of these describe the same being.
If God exists, then all references to the same All-powerful creator of the world are references to the same thing. It doesn't matter if Christians and Jews and Muslims kill each other over whether or not God drinks beer and eats pork; He's still the same objective being.
If we take the singular form of God to its linquistic extreme--that being a reference to simply a singular being of great power who looks over human beings while hiding Himself from us--our number of possible instances of evidence for His existance increases dramatically.
The assertion wasn't "there's a bunch of evidence that proves I'm right about what I say God is like." It was "there's evidence that God exists."
It wasn't a "rejection of God" until someone else proposed the existence of god.
It was still a religious choice. Your religion--specifically, the belief structure you use to explain the unknown and the creation of the world--is apparantly "Science."
I have no problem, religious or otherwise, with people who's religious choice is science. A religion based on doubt has several good charactersitcs that I wish were more prevalent in my own faith.
But it's arrogant and self-righeous for someone whose religion is science to claim that they don't have a religion, and that their choice of an unproven* scientific theory over a religious explination of the same events is based on science and not personal perference.
The burden of proof on religion is always with the individual, no matter their religous claim. We all must find what we believe, and why we believe it. If I can convince you to believe what I believe, I do not remove the burden of proof from your shoulders as to your own religion; I've simply altered your claim to match mine.
Second, if I assume that all the available reports of King Richard are more or less true, they fit; if I assume they are mistakes or hallucinations or fabrications, I've got a very big puzzle on my hands - a huge conspiracy? Mass hallucination?
Tall tales, myth, a lie told by the English King. Take your pick. There are all sorts of stories from the same time period and from the same base of sources that are no longer taken to be true.
If I were to change the King from Richard to Arthur, I doubt that you would make the claim that Arthur was a real historical figure--despite that history was taught as if he were a Real Person for hundreds of years.
If I assume that all the available reports of the Christian god are more or less true, not only don't fit each other (is this an angry or loving diety? how to I reconcile the Quakers with Oral Roberts? not to mention all the biblical contradictions [webster.sk.ca]),
The page you just listed has a rather atrocious style, and makes claims every bit as wild--if not wilder--as the zealots who give my religion a bad scientific reputation. Not to mention that it fails to see the obvious answer that doesn't discredit the message: Hebrew as a language is relatively limited (or was limited at the time), lacking concepts and words that mankind simply did not understand at the time, and God has changed his message over time.
Just a quibble. A better rebuttal is below.
they contradict equally reliable reports about Jewish, Islamic, Hindu, Shinto, Buddhist, et cetera deities; while if I assume they are instances of mistaking subjective mystical experiences for objective phenomena, I can explain all of them consistently.
The Jewish & Islamic claims are about the same guy, Shinto (AFAIK) makes no claims regarding the Jews or the Creator, Hindus no doubt heard of early monotheism and adapted their religion to explain it (ever hear of Brahmin?), and Bhuddism was largely a rebellion against Hindu, but nevertheless does not contradict God's existance. (At the very least, He'd be the first spirit to imagine reality.)
From a purely scientific standpoint, inconsitent details about a Thing do not discret the thing's actual existance. There might be serious dissent as to if Richard the Lionhearted was a homosexual or not, but such claims don't discredit his existance.
A dramatic majority of human beings, even just counting those alive today, believe in some form of superior creator deity who either dictated holy texts to the people of Earth or performed events that inspired the holy writings.
Rejection of this evidence--and the general scientific prejudict against religion--is nothing more than a continuance of a religious conflict dating back to the dawn of science, when early scientists threw the baby out with the bathwater so as to continue their research.
Oh, and no one's ever seriously made the claim that Elvis clones run around stealing socks. No one has seriously claimed to see them, meet them, or get a message from them.
Hallucinagens. And lots of them.
But seriously, I still don't see this as convincing evidence. Plenty of Scientologists believe that they've experienced assorted crap that I think we can both agree is bull. Or the Heaven's Gate cult that killed themselves because they "saw" a UFO in the tail of Halley's Comet.
Or what about people who report encounters with aliens, including probing, biological testing, abduction, etc. They certainly BELIEVE that they've experienced this. However, there is absolutely no proof of anything actually happening. Accidental self-hypnosis combined with hypnotic suggestion. Same thing happens sometimes when psychologists and psychiatrists perform hypnosis to look for repressed memories. They often inadvertantly create false memories which the person truly believes happened but has no basis at all in reality.
I'm not saying that this is the case or not. Whether a supreme being exists and came down in the form of a man named Jesus two millenia ago is unprovable. If you believe Jesus was the messiah or not, it's still a matter of belief. What 12 men believed they experienced 2000 years ago and wrote in their (highly politically motivated and often conflicting) memoirs is not unquestionable proof one way or another. I'm sorry, but if you want to convince me, you're going to have to give me some more solid proof.
If not all sentients are human, couldn't it be possible that not all humans are sentient either?
"existance is older than the sum of human memory & was created through random chance" fails on the last two as well.
True. Fortunately, the various theories of evolution are a lot more detailed than that.
It would not falsify the "no god" theory.
"No god" is also not a theory.
Common language lets "theory" stand for any idea that can explain observed facts.
Who cares about common language? We are talking about science here.
True. Fortunately, the various theories of evolution are a lot more detailed than that.
But, when projected backwards and used as history, they're still neither falsifiable nor a good source for predictions. Get a time machine, and then we'll talk.
(note: I believe in the natural prinicple of evolution, and that it shapes every living organism when given enough time. I have no religious belief on if God created the world 6000 real-years ago or 6000 God-years; the allmighty's on a differnet time scale, and I suspect he might have just fast-forwarded through the boring parts inbetween adjusting the flow of evolution...)
Who cares about common language? We are talking about science here.
On slashdot? No, this is a common, colloquial discussion forum open to (and frequented by) laymen with little to no real scientific knowledge. Theory (and other technical terms), unless used in expressly scientific terminology, should be assmed to be used in a colloquial sense. Especially when comparing two things, neither of which is a scientific Theory.
No scientist debates whether or not the universe extends as observed with no sentient guiding hands beyond our own in all four dimensions. It's simply not possible to factor in such a variable to science, so it's easy enough for science to ignore it until when, if ever, said sentient guidng hands decide to make themselves known, at which time science will return to figuring exactly how many angels can fit on the head of a pin...
Again, it seems irrefuatble that, if the Sentient Guiding Hand does exist, He wants us to act in a pracital matter as if He doesn't, and not put real-world plans in motion that hinge on His action or proving His existance or disexistance. (Like a wiccan friend of mine said--He's the world's Biggest Geek, who sat around some day borded so He decided to make Himself some friends.)
But, when projected backwards and used as history, they're still neither falsifiable nor a good source for predictions.
Um, sure they are. Why wouldn't they be? I wonder if the problem is that you are confusing evolution with abiogenesis. Evolution doesn't care how life got started, it takes over from there.
Um, sure they are. Why wouldn't they be?
Ok, tell me how to falsify historical evolution--specifically, the "we evolved from something else" part.
While you're at it, find a good record of predictions that evolution's made.
I wonder if the problem is that you are confusing evolution with abiogenesis. Evolution doesn't care how life got started, it takes over from there.
As I said before, evolution is a great and wonderful biological principle that no one in their right mind can disagree with.
Historical evolution--which is simply taking the percieved principles of breeding and stretching them backwards--is not. Especially when it contradicts things like Intelligent Design.
A thorough school class on the history of life (taught in high school as "biology") should logically get into each of the current ideas that explain where life came from and how it got here, instead of ridiculing "the old belief that life sprang full-bore from mud" and ignoring current religion entirely.
Ok, tell me how to falsify historical evolution--specifically, the "we evolved from something else" part.
Easy. I can think of two way right off the bat. 1. If human-like fossils suddenly appeared in the fossil record without any earlier, less human-like fossils before them. 2. If our DNA wasn't similar to other great apes.
Historical evolution--which is simply taking the percieved principles of breeding and stretching them backwards--is not.
You might as well say that just because gravity makes things fall today, you can't say that it made things fall in the distant past.
Especially when it contradicts things like Intelligent Design.
You can't contradict Intelligent Design because there's nothing to contradict. Coming full circle here, Intelligent Design is not a theory. Just for starters, how do you objectively distinguish something that was designed from something that wasn't?
each of the current ideas that explain where life came from and how it got here
There is ONLY one scientific idea of how life got here. There are a bunch of unsupported fantasies, but they have no place in science class. If you want to teach I.D., then we might as well teach the idea that the Earth is flat too, for they both have the same scientific footing.
There is ONLY one scientific idea of how life got here. There are a bunch of unsupported fantasies, but they have no place in science class. If you want to teach I.D., then we might as well teach the idea that the Earth is flat too, for they both have the same scientific footing.
once again...
The backwards extrapolation of evolution to explain the origin of our species and all species is not proven science. If religion didn't have anything to say about it, it wouldn't be an issue--but religion does, and the origin of life is one of those few parts where science cannot be tested against religion.
If scientific belief went over to say that the natural state of human beings was to be polygamist murderers, that wouldn't be taught in schools either.
And I don't necessarilly want the schools to teach I.D. They shouldn't teach any idea of where life came from, at least not in a "science" class where the textbook is taken and taught as if it were irrefutable truth. Evolution-from-lesser things, Creation, I.D. et al should be taught in either "social studies" or a "religions of the world" class.
It's a religious question, and so it should be treated as such, and the schools should stay neutral.
What about polytheism?
Religion involves blind faith. Science is about testable hypotheses.
It's not reasonable to compare the likelihood of "an intelligent designer" vs a hypothesis of evolution from (say) ferrite clays, because they're not at comparable levels of detail and specificity.
To take your analogy of a crime scene: the police may have some trouble working out exactly which human committed the crime, and how. But that doesn't mean that we need to start assuming that the crime was committed by mythological beings. The general hypothesis ("it was done by a human") is well-established, even if the details ("it was done by the butler") are not yet.
At a very broad level of detail, we can weigh up "there is an intelligent designer", vs "there is no intelligent design but merely process". Some arguments can be made each way, but on the whole it seems unnecessary to introduce mysterious invisible actors without overwhelming evidence.
If you want to get specific, then mainstream science can provide a number of possible explanations for how various processes occur: life arrived on asteroids, evolved in clay, evolved in tide pools, etc. If you want to fairly challenge them, you ought to provide a countertheory at a comparable level of detail. Don't just say "God did it", but rather answer: By what mechanism did god move atoms around to create life? By what means did he associate souls and animals? Where did god come from? Why is your idea of god any more convincing than any of the thousands of others?
To be taken seriously, you have to answer all those questions in a way that is scientifically falsifiable. Creationists tend to intentionally leave the details fairly vague and hard to refute, saying that god did it through means that we can't possibly understand. That may or may not be true, but since it's not open to criticism or evaluation there is not much point in considering it.
Nothing can be proven beyond any doubt, but evolution is pretty well established, as much as say the atomic theory of chemistry, or gravity. You may not want to accept it, but practically every unbiased (non-fundamentalist) person who examines the evidence will accept it.
I can't see any prima facie reason why it can't be tested. The origin of life is just an event that occurred at some time in the past. As with any past even we can try to understand it by trying to find and interpret evidence of the events, or by trying to reproduce a similar situation, or indeed just by eliminating impossibilities, amongst other methods.
A similar argument could have been made a few years ago about thunder being caused by electrons vs angry gods, or about the geocentric universe. What makes your case any different?
With respect to science...
:), Charles Russel, Mary Baker Eddy, Joseph Smith - all of the founders of the major world religions are dead - except Jesus Christ who demonstrated His infinite power by being raised from the dead.
god did it through means that we can't possibly understand
With all due respect, that is not the assertion that I am making, and it seems a bit unfair to suggest that it is.
I belive that God's creation of the universe and life in an orderly way provides the foundation on which we stand when using our intellect to examine the universe. The idea that it was created with order means that we have the hope of discovering that order, and could potentially understand it as well.
answer all those questions in a way that is scientifically falsifiable
I appreciate your reasoning for this line of discussion, but I disagree with you. The issue of origins is a philosophical one, not a scientific one. If you assert that matter or the universe has existed forever, that is not scientifically falsifiable. If you assert that life was deposited here via asteroid, that merely shifts the question to another point of origin - how did life begin there?
Please note that I am not suggesting that these things are not to be examined, but rather that it is disingenuous to assert that science can be used to determine the answers - or that "religion" is unqualified to answer philosophical questions.
With respect to philosophy
Why is your idea of god any more convincing than any of the thousands of others?
Fair question. I believe that the God of Christianity can be more closely examined than any other god using intellect, critical thinking, and historical evidence. The fact of the resurrection of Jesus Christ is poweful in this regard.
Mohammed is dead, Buddha is dead, Confucious is dead, Nietzche is dead
His followers overturned the most powerful government in the world without use of force - but rather by living lives consistent with the teachings of Christ.
This one man's life has had a more profound impact on world culture, philosophy, and governance than any other person's.
Jesus said: "I am the way, the truth and the life."
Regards,
Anomaly
But Herr Heisenberg, how does the electron know when I'm looking?
Good science classes shouldn't say that "science" is an irrefutable, infalible body of facts. "Science" is a process of successive approximation whereby we gradually, haltingly proceed towards more reliable and general understandings of the law.
You've never been to an American high school science class, I take it.
The whole system is built on and depends on the students not questioning the teachers. When there is something that can still be realistically debated or is unsure ("Where did we come from" or "can socialism ever work" are two big ones in my book. I'm sure "computers use windows" is another one.)
I can't see any prima facie reason why it can't be tested. The origin of life is just an event that occurred at some time in the past. As with any past even we can try to understand it by trying to find and interpret evidence of the events, or by trying to reproduce a similar situation, or indeed just by eliminating impossibilities, amongst other methods.
The best we can get there is to find a plausible way that life COULD have began. We might even manage to make new life. But we can't prove how life _really did_ happen.
Personally, I think if science classes left the religious bias at the door and used the supposition as a teaching tool it'd stick better in the kids' minds. (Instead of "we all evolved randomly", a thought of "what would it take for intelligent design".)
A similar argument could have been made a few years ago about thunder being caused by electrons vs angry gods, or about the geocentric universe. What makes your case any different?
Thunder is an extant phenomina. You can go out and hear thunder just about every week on Earth if you go to the right place. We can reproduce thunder. Oh, and there isn't a significant body of people who thinks that _thunder_ is caused by angry gods. (The common belief that He Who Controls Random Events can use lightning to express anger is different; it's like causing a landslide to bury someone's house--you don't change the mechanism just by having someone conciously start it.)
Oh, and as the Universe has no real center, we can place the center wherever it's most convenient for us. We use the sun when it makes all of the orbits in our system easy, and the Earth when it makes local navigation easy.
In case you haven't got it: "my case" is different because we're not aruging HOW life could have began, we're discussing how it DID. The rocks roll down the hill because of gravity as opposed to the will of angry-godling, but that doesn't mean that angry-godling could not have started them rolling.
Mohammed is dead, Buddha is dead, Confucious is dead, Nietzche is dead :), Charles Russel, Mary Baker Eddy, Joseph Smith - all of the founders of the major world religions are dead - except Jesus Christ who demonstrated His infinite power by being raised from the dead.
OMG. I cannot believe that you just wrote that.This is EXACTLY the reason why "Christian-scientists" are an oxymoron. You can believe in Christianity and science at the same time, but put the two together, and you get statements like this. You can say this is your philosophy, and it doesn't impact the scientific side, but if you REALLY believe what you have written, then there is no way you can be objective about science.
His followers overturned the most powerful government in the world without use of force - but rather by living lives consistent with the teachings of Christ.
ROTFL. Yeah, Christians are non-violent, always. They are above that. Holy crap, do you actually believe that?
This one man's life has had a more profound impact on world culture, philosophy, and governance than any other person's. Jesus said: "I am the way, the truth and the life."
I can almost believe this, but I think it has less to do with Jesus, and more to do with the organized religions that have spawned around his name, and their pursuit of power. From my experience, Christianity is one of the religions where the practitioners are the least compliant with what the real message of Christ was about. They twist it, bend it, and mold it to whatever they want it to say.
Man, I was kind of with you up to a certain point, but when I read the above paragraphs, my jaw dropped. What you wrote is a shining example of why I believe organized religion to be a poison to truth.
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
Christianity is one of the religions where the practitioners are the least compliant with what the real message of Christ was about. They twist it, bend it, and mold it to whatever they want it to say
I could not agree with you more on this particular point. Much of what passes for Christianity today has little to do with the teachings of Christ.
Christians are non-violent, always
Christians are not always non-violent. Two points here.
1) Christ explicitly indicated to Peter that we (Christians) should not look to extend Christianity by force. Christ did not approve of the tyranny of the Crusades.
BTW - The Jews were looking for a messiah that would be a military conqueror, and did not find that in Christ - it's one of the main reasons that they rejected Him.
2) Violence is not always contrary to Christian teaching. I believe that "just war" theory is consistent with the teachings of Christ - but that is in the area of political power, not religious power.
For the most part, I would agree with you that "organized religion" is more about protection of power than about worship of God. I can't go so far as to say that all organized churches are corrupt. They are certainly influenced by the fallible humans that participate there, but there are many Christian churches where folks earnestly desire to submit their lives to Christ, and are not consumed with personal agendas and power.
Truth (absolute truth) does exist, and you can find it in some Christian churches in the world.
Sadly, most churches are more about social causes, clubs, and family traditions than about submission to Christ's leadership. In those you will find that politics, position and power are regarded highly and those are a poison to the pursuit of truth.
more to do with the organized religions that have spawned around his name, and their pursuit of power
Here we disagree. I believe that if you look at history closely, you will find that the organized church only attained power because the early church members were willing to submit themselves personally to whatever it cost them to continue to follow Christ. Without their unswerving commitment to Christ's authority in their lives, the Christian church (as an organization) would never have gained enough credibility to wield any power. Tragically over the centuries, much of the church has become corrupt - take a look at the reformation to see some examples, and at the current day - from televangelists to abusive priests - you're right - power has corrupted.
We must not judge a philosophy by those who abuse it, but rather judge it by those who adhere strictly to the tenets of that philosophy and see the logical outcome. There are deviants in every religious movement. They are not the standard - look closely at those who follow Christ - For example - what about Billy Graham? Is he consumed with power or position? What about Mother Teresa? Was she looking to build an empire in her name? I submit to you that those two individuals have had more influence on the world of the last century than most of the organized Christian church - precisely because of their personal commitment to Christ.
Respectfully,
Anomaly
But Herr Heisenberg, how does the electron know when I'm looking?
god did it through means that we can't possibly understand
OK, perhaps you're not saying that the means are impossible to understand. However, until you explain in detail how you think a god did create life, it is not really fair for you to ridicule somebody else's attempt.
So, how is it god created life? Do you believe he fashioned a body out of clay, and "breathed life into it"? How did the clay turn into flesh?
Or did he create a simple cell, and then guide evolution? What was it that caused the atoms to move into that configuration? Did they appear from nothing? Or were they floating around, and grabbed by some kind of electromechanical force? By what means were the dynamic processes set into motion. (Was the chicken, or the egg created first?)
I seriously doubt if you can provide any answers to this that sound more credible than mainstream scientific explanations for the origin of life. But I would be interested to hear you try. (And I'm not being sarcastic.)
The issue of origins is a philosophical one, not a scientific one. If you assert that matter or the universe has existed forever, that is not scientifically falsifiable.
Religions have often tried to mark off particular questions as being "not in the proper domain of science", but they have consistently been proved wrong. Science is merely rational ordered enquiry. Any question about the universe is in principle open to such enquiry.
So for example we can say that "the universe is no more than 6000 years old", and attempt to falsify that theory by finding matter older than 6000 years. Proving it infinitely old is perhaps proving a negative, but we might demonstrate convincingly that it has apparently always been in a metastable state.
except Jesus Christ who demonstrated His infinite power by being raised from the dead.
I'm sorry, but that's mere assertion! Can't you see that people of other religions will hold equally strong beliefs in the existence of their own mythological beings? Many people honestly believe the Dalai Lama is a reincarnation of a supernatural being, who has exerted an enormous beneficial influence on the world. Aside from your personal belief, what makes your position any different?
Stories of torment, sacrifice, and resurrection are a dime a dozen amongst saviour religions. (Odin, for example.) Having founders of the religion swear to the truth is pretty unconvincing.
The heart of the scientific method is trying to open your own assumptions to criticism.
However, Christian believers can't do that, because they think their eternal life depends on solid belief in their doctrine. Without abandoning their faith, they are not able to genuinely consider whether it is true or not.
His followers overturned the most powerful government in the world without use of force
"Without use of force" is an exaggeration.
By a parallel argument, do you think that (largely nonviolent) Buddhist evangelism of Asia proves that their beliefs are universally true? If not, what is the difference?
(btw, this article will probably be archived soon, but if you're finding the debate as interesting as i am please mail me.)
Evolution is a theory
Wow, man. Take a science class, will you? A scientific theory (like evolution, relativity, plate tectonics, etc.) is a highly and quantifiably accurate description of how the universe really works, not a hypothesis. Scientific theory is backed up by experimental results.
I will never understand how a body of people can assert that what they believe is the "truth" when that "truth" flies in the face of objective fact.
And spare me your pathetic attempts to explain away the very real and obious evidence supporting evolution; it's tiresome and pointless.If there were a god, it stands to reasons that he/she/it would be mightily PISSED that his/her/its followers refuse to see or acknowledge easily discernible truth.
Karma
You've never been to an American high school science class, I take it.
No, I went to school in Australia, where the teachers did a good job of describing the scientific method in the way I said.
The whole system is built on and depends on the students not questioning the teachers.
Perhaps this is why America is far worse than every other western country in belief in the more ridiculous religious doctrines? I seem to remember a recent NAS survey finding that something like 40% of Americans believed in creation along the lines of the Genesis myth within the past 6000 years.
(Instead of "we all evolved randomly", a thought of "what would it take for intelligent design".)
Well, there is basically no credible evidence for "Intelligent Design". It's just a few kooks and a larger number of credulous followers. As I point out elsewhere, none of them have any kind of explanation of *how* it might have occurred. The National Academy of Sciences recently released a statement to this effect. So it's not bad to occasionally discuss wrong or unfounded theories in science classes, but there are so many that you can't cover all of them. I think my chemistry teacher talked about phlogiston, for example.
There is no religious bias in science. It proceeds merely by examining the evidence and comparing theories. If it should happen that people's previous beliefs are proved wrong, that's just tough.
Teaching superstition in schools is incredibly harmful to the development of rational thought. "Perhaps a god created the universe?" "Perhaps sickness is caused by the Evil Eye, or impure thoughts?" "Perhaps food poisoning occurs when it's prepared by a menstruating woman?" The problem with all these ideas is not merely that they are factually incorrect, but that teaching them encourages children to believe doctrine rather than to enquire after truth.
The rocks roll down the hill because of gravity as opposed to the will of angry-godling, but that doesn't mean that angry-godling could not have started them rolling.
Actually, yes, it does mean that the godling didn't start them rolling. Once we understand the naturalistic explanation about erosion, soil mechanics, catastrophe theory and so on, there is simply no need for the angry godling any more, and in the absence of other evidence sensible people delete him from their beliefs.
Oh, and as the Universe has no real center, we can place the center wherever it's most convenient for us.
A few years ago, people used biblical arguments to "prove" that the Earth was absolutely stationary, and the rest of the universe rotated around it. Indeed, the whole weight of the "infallible(tm)" Catholic church was on this doctrine. Of course now it's ridiculous.
Creationism is already seen as pretty similar by most educated people and eventually even the southern US will catch up.
He might be a god of limited power, or an uncaring or apathetic god, for example. Lots of other possibilities too.
Well, then he's not much of a god, is he?
So, it looks like we have three possibilities:
1. God is not omnipotent.
2. God is not omnibenevolent.
3. There is no god.
If god is not omnipotent (and recall that the christian bible claims repeatedly that he is), then he cannot be infallible, in which case, he has no business meddling in the lives of humans. Such meddling by a fallible deity must eventually cause harm and a deity that would knowingly cause harm must be evil.
If god is not omnibenevolent (and recall that the new testamtent claims repeatedly that he is), then christian exhortations to love and forgive are in contradiction to the beliefs of an apathetic god, and thus meaningless.
If god is a god of limited power, yet still exists, then there is every reason to believe that god was created by a meta-god, in which case, why waste our time with the under-god? But then we're left with the original, unanswerable question: why do bad things happen?
Atheism may not be much comfort, but it beats believeing in a loving god who can't do anything or in an all-powerful god who doesn't care enough to do anything.
Karma
Well, now that we know how you stand, you stand on an ever chinging theory of science, heck, if this was the 1400 you would say, no the world is flat, science proves that. I would say, nope the bible says its round, you would call me a moron, and I would be right. So your belief in "science" is funny to me.
:)
is a highly and quantifiably accurate description of how the universe really works, not a hypothesis. Scientific theory is backed up by experimental results.
why don't you give me some of the experimental results. if you know what you were talking about maybe we would discuss this further, but you proved yourself a moron. have a nice day.
Right, but virtually everything that religion (pick any religion) says about the origin of life is falsifiable with readily available evidence.
"The historical nature of macroevolutionary study involves inference from fossils and DNA rather than direct observation. Yet in the historical sciences (which include astronomy, geology and archaeology, as well as evolutionary biology), hypotheses can still be tested by checking whether they accord with physical evidence and whether they lead to verifiable predictions about future discoveries. For instance, evolution implies that between the earliest-known ancestors of humans (roughly five million years old) and the appearance of anatomically modern humans (about 100,000 years ago), one should find a succession of hominid creatures with features progressively less apelike and more modern, which is indeed what the fossil record shows. But one should not--and does not--find modern human fossils embedded in strata from the Jurassic period (144 million years ago). Evolutionary biology routinely makes predictions far more refined and precise than this, and researchers test them constantly. "
- from "Fifteen Answers to Creationist Nonsense" Scientific American
Karma
It was still a religious choice. Your religion--specifically, the belief structure you use to explain the unknown and the creation of the world--is apparantly "Science."
Science is most definitely not a religion. Religion is specifically personal; no one else can fully understand or feel exactly what you feel when you have a religious experience. Science, on the other hand, is the same for everybody. Different sized rocks fall at the same rate all over the world. Anyone can measure the temperature of ice and, subject to errors of calibration, achieve the same results.
If, as you seem to be claiming, the will of god is a valid explanation for the workings of the universe, then a person of sufficiently strong faith should be able to post on slashdot without the use of a computer.
Karma
Shut up, you fucking whiner.