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Scientists Create RNA From Primordial Soup
Kristina at Science News writes "The RNA world hypothesis proposed 40 years ago suggested that life on Earth started not with DNA but with RNA. Now a team of scientists bolsters this hypothesis, having assembled RNA in the lab from a mixture that resembles what was likely the primordial soup. 'Until now,' Science News reports, 'scientists couldn't figure out the chemical reactions that created the earliest RNA molecules.' The new work started the RNA assembly chemistry from a different angle than what earlier work had tried."
if the ID/Creationists claim there is a god then the burden of proof is on the ID/Creationists to prove god exists, until then i remain a devout atheist...
Politics is Treachery, Religion is Brainwashing
No it wouldn't. It certainly doesn't disprove an intelligent designer. One could argue that it would prove the existence of an IDer, however it does not.
It's eminently possible, even under these circumstances, that the universe evolved atheistically, until some asshole god/demiurge decided to take credit for it and toast Sol III.
"They were pure niggers." – Noam Chomsky
Abiogenesis.... Take that ID-iots!
Scientists stitching together molecules like a chemical zipper to recreate a simple RNA sounds a lot more like "Design" and a lot less like "abiogenesis" to me, actually...
Quoting Sutherland's team from TFA:
It's not as simple as putting compounds in a beaker and mixing it up. It's a series of steps. You still have to stop and purify and then do the next step, and that probably didn't happen in the ancient world.
Seriously, watching Abiogenesis fiends bickering with "Intelligent Design" supporters over who is more wrong makes me think I'm back on Digg when it was used as Richard Dawkin's RSS feed.
I am the richest astronaut ever to win the superbowl.
Religion relies on faith. If God somehow proved he exists, then faith would be irrelevant.
The greatest gift Humanity has is the ability to choose its own destiny, i.e. the concept of Free Will.
If God were to be in residence, it would diminish Free Will.
Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then He is not omnipotent. Is He able, but not willing? Then He is malevolent. Is He both able and willing? Then whence cometh evil? Is He neither able nor willing? Then why call Him God?
-Epicurus, 300 BCE
The refrain from fundamentalists, Christian and Muslim and Jew alike, is because he is God, and he said so, according to this really old book. Which is usually the inerrant word of God - they just can't agree on which version is the "perfect" word. Once you try to engage someone who firmly believes that they know what God thinks, there's no use in trying to apply logic.
One of my favorite David Cross bits is where he's asking out loud for the name of the television show where there's this guy on stage, and everyone in the television audience believes he can talk to the dead. The crowd in front of David keeps shouting out "Crossing Over!"
And then David says, "Oh no, it was church, it was church."
I totally agree which is why I always state I'm agnostic instead of an athiest and calling people stupid for beliving one way or another is a waste of time. That's the classic school yard argument of my dad's better than yours and multiply that by what ever you say next times two.
That said one side clearly on average is a lot more sain in their point of view and refuse to take at face value any traditional religion's stories and explination of creation or even recent events (I'm looking at you Noah!!!).
I'm also not impressed we can find complex order or chaos in nature nad call that evidence in anyway either.
I know and with my simple mind i can drop a coin and have a 50/50 chance of hitting heads or tails. It is also not a far stretch for me to imagine doing that uncountable times and that eventually changing the shape by chipping and binding it so it becomes much more predictable.
YOU just made a number of logical errors, posing them as some sort of truth.
Buddhism certainly relies on faith. One has to have faith that the rewards of the philosophy will work as advertised. Depending on the flavor of Buddhism, there are indeed some things that need to be taken with a grain of salt.
Evidence that the Buddha existed is surely in abundance, but what about Brahma or the devas? Certainly some faith is required to accept that they are real.
That you would state "..your God's.." is pure opinion. A belief in God (of any flavor) was not pronounced.
Free Will is apparent. Predestination is implied and neither Free Will nor Predestination are pointless. You didn't sufficiently explain why Free Will would be a curse.
The reason Free Will and the manifestation of God in our world are not compatible is because of the idea that God cannot force humanity to respect the Divinity or to follow God's wishes. People must freely choose to do that. God in residence would really remove the faith aspect of Free Will. I choose to follow a certain path because I am free to do so...not because God, who somehow ended up living in Ohio, is going to baste my testicles in brimstone and fire AND I KNOW he will BECAUSE he's fricken' RIGHT THERE in Ohio. Faith and Free Will aren't quite the same with God in residence.
Indeed; nothing can.
Nor indeed is there any requirement or reason to "demonstrate the non-existence of X," where there is no evidence for the putative existence of X.
On a side not, this discovery doesn't demonstrate the non-existence of the tooth fairy either.
Better to be despised for too anxious apprehensions, than ruined by too confident a security. --Edmund Burke
Demonstrating that another link in the evolutionary chain can happen without conscious intervention (spontaneously and mechanically) does not demonstrate the non-existence of an intelligent designer.
Are you familiar with the scientific process? This was yet another falsifiable test for the currently best supported version of the theory of abiogenesis. It was a test the theory passed, adding more support for said theory in that it made a useful prediction.
It, at best, removes a point that was previously used to defend ID.
ID is not logically defensible. It is not science. There is no hypothesis of intelligent design that I've ever been able to find.
But, logically, the inability to prove something does not constitute a disproof (that would be the fallacy of Argumentum ad Ignorantium).
The logical structure of the scientific method is well known. We even covered it in my intro to logic class and in numerous books I've read since. This research s deductive logic supporting an inductive conclusion. The more of the former, the stronger the premise supported by the latter.
You probably know all this, but we don't want to give the impression that the scientific method is not logically supported, nor its conclusions not logically supported by this particular experiment.