If not, please have the grace to admit that it is not "hard science" based on experiment, empirical results, or what not
Please, why the implied slur? I never said that we know down the last detail how things occurred, I said that current thought is that the first self-replicating molecule was RNA. I would strongly encourage all creationists not to become too invested in the absolute statement "It couldn't happen, therefore God did it by miraculous intervention!" If we make progress in the next ten years that shows the RNA world is not only plausible, but likely, the creationists who've jammed God into this gap may have some difficulties with their faith. When I believed in God I had to fight this God of the gaps tendency myself. God doesn't belong in the gaps, but should be an engineer of the processes that we may eventually discover in those gaps.
And abiogenesis doesn't really have too much to do with evolution, but it's an interesting topic. :-D The theory of evolution doesn't require abiogenesis to occur on earth, it just requires an imperfectly duplicating, self-propagating organism (from abiogenesis, extraterrestrial seeding, divine intervention, etc.)
That was my point--I was attempting to *bolster* your point about current thinking. If the RNA encoding was in a book from 17 years ago, that means it isn't even "latest & greatest " anymore. :-)
Please, why the implied slur? I never said that we know down the last detail how things occurred, I said that current thought is that the first self-replicating molecule was RNA.
Not meant as a slur, implied or otherwise. Sorry to have given that impression. The gist of my point is that to hear some of the more fervent pro-evo's on this thread talk, evolution is as firmly nailed down as (say) the r2 dependence of gravitational attraction, to umpteen decimal points. And virtually anyone who dares to point out possible contradictions in the mechanisms proposed (even ones put out merely carelessly as examples on this thread) is immediately lambasted as an ignorant savage. In most other fields of science I have seen, the scientists *welcome* questions, because it either gives them a chance to sharpen their intellectual claws, or because (as both Feynman *and* C.S. Lewis pointed out), if you cannot explain your subject to a layperson using mostly words of one syllable, you don't really *understand* it yourself, all the way down.
BTW, the impatience with any questions about evo on this thread might just be due to the sheer volume of trolls and people who think that Duane Gish = Stephen Jay Gould as a resource ;-0
When I believed in God I had to fight this God of the gaps tendency myself. God doesn't belong in the gaps, but should be an engineer of the processes that we may eventually discover in those gaps.
I'm not *playing* God of the gaps. I'm playing *prick the balloon* of inflated claims by people who are doing one of two things:
1) Confusing a purported mechanism, or "latest thinking" with "absolute truth"
2) Trying to point out (again, and Again, and AGAIN) that many of the cre-trolls have (at best) very little formal science training and simply DON'T KNOW THE DIFFERENCE. And so instead of flaming them, a better approach is to try to educate them.
The banned RightWingProfessor tried, but was often too irascible: and went over their heads.
Ichneumon (haven't heard from him lately) wrote elegant encyclopedias, but they took too long for a casual reader to go through.
The dictionary of scientific / philosophical terms by (I think) Coyoteman and/or CarolinaGuitarman and/or Dimensio and/or Patrick Henry is a great start.
We need more of that kind of thing on these threads.
One of the other posters suggested I start on it. It's on my to-do list and I'm seriously considering a series of bite-size threads on various beginning points.
Full Disclosure: Ironic comment only. It is odd that despite the claims that evolution isn't about disproving God, many (not all) of the most ardent evo's are at best agnostic, at worst militant atheists. As you said, "*when* you believed in God etc. etc." ;-) Cheers!