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To: exDemMom; betty boop; metmom

bettyboop:

Well, where did DNA come from? That is, on what causal principle does it itself rest?

DNA is an organic molecule. A system containing the elements that make up organic molecules (carbon, hydrogen, oxygen), a few other elements, and energy, spontaneously produces a large variety of organic molecules according to physical law.


She asked where it came from, not what it is...


147 posted on 04/27/2012 7:36:21 PM PDT by tpanther (Science was, is and will forever be a small subset of God's creation.)
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To: tpanther; exDemMom; Ha Ha Thats Very Logical; allmendream; Alamo-Girl
She asked where it came from, not what it is...

Indeed, tpanther, that was my very question, which exDemMom simply ignored.

Let me put the question another way: How does an inorganic molecule become an "organic" one in the first place?

ORGANIC: adjective
"relating to or derived from living matter":
Chemistry relating to or denoting compounds containing carbon (other than simple binary compounds and salts) and chiefly or ultimately of biological origin. Compare with inorganic [adjective denoting "not consisting of or deriving from living matter"].

So, how does an inorganic molecule become an organic one? This transition would involve a non-living entity becoming a living entity. How does this happen?

I gather that since biochemistry has no answer to this question, exDemMom, Ha Ha Thats Very Logical, and allmendream simply dismiss it "by sleight of hand" as it were, and refuse to engage it.

As Robert Godwin has noted, "In their attempt to account for the origins of life (and discourage creationists), biochemists like to blur the distinction between life and matter. so now they talk about a period of 'pre-life' preparing the way for the emergence of life." And yet,

Really, this kind of "junk metaphysics" is an attempt to sneak the principle of natural selection into the universe before there is a biology for it to operate on. In any event, it makes no philosophical sense, for the term "pre-life" assumes something — life — which supposedly did not exist and could not have been predicted by merely looking at its molecular constituents. If a period of pre-life did in fact prefigure life, then it is unnecessary to qualify it as "pre-," because it was part of the process of life and therefore indistinguishable from it. In other words, if we wish to be intellectually honest, we must place "pre-life" on the life side of the matter/life divide, not on the matter side, unless we fatuously rename life "post-matter."...

If the materialistic explanation of life is true, it can't be true: matter is dead, life is matter. therefore life is dead. Nevertheless, most scientists take it for granted that life does not exist as anything separate and distinct from matter. In the fashionable reductionist view, this is simply the way it must be: biology is in the end nothing more than an unlikely but mildly interesting property of physics. (Why interesting? Why should matter be interested in anything?) But this is hardly a suitable explanation for such a profound mystery. Rather, it is a "question-begging fallacy" that "demands an initial acceptance of the doctrine of naturalism before any explanation is offered." In other words, only matter is ultimately real, so that life may be reduced to, and fully explained by, the electrical and chemical properties of atoms and molecules.... Knowledge must always be a one-way, bottom-up affair:

[Godwin cites Robert Rosen here], "One must never pass to a larger system in trying to understand a given one, but must invoke simpler sub-systems.... From simple to complex is only a matter of accretion of simple, context-independent parts." [emphasis mine]

But unfortunately, this means that biology can never be reached by physics — you can't get here from there. Instead of looking "forward" at what all the parts of an organism are converging upon — that is, the living organism — biology looks backward at that which the organism uses to express its functional wholeness, thus destroying the very thing — life — it is attempting to explain. This is odd, because it is not possible to even begin a discussion of life without an unstated intuition of the dynamic wholeness that is always manifested through it.

The "organic molecule" DNA seems to have something to do with the expression of that "dynamic wholeness" in living organisms. But many if not most scientists today believe that "wholes" are merely the "sum of their parts," and nothing more.

In closing, it appears our biochemicist correspondents here believe that the electrical and chemical properties of atoms and molecules plus "chance" plus "evolution" gives us an explanation of life.

But I believe that "chance remains a glorious cover-up for ignorance." I also note that strict determinism "is refuted by the very freedom whereby it is posited." As Godwin cites Barfield: "Chance, in fact = no hypothesis."

No wonder we "creationists" can never get on the same page with "Darwinist materialists."

Thank you ever so much, dear tpanther, for your astute observation, and for writing!

150 posted on 04/28/2012 10:18:58 AM PDT by betty boop (We are led to believe a lie when we see with, and not through the eye. — William Blake)
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