Posted on 03/20/2004 7:38:37 PM PST by Leroy S. Mort
I'm so glad we have you around to separate data from interpretation.
Occam!
Us ignorant evolutionists manage. You would think it wouldn't be a problem for you brilliant creationists.
The doctrine of Spontaneous Generation holds that organic life could and does arise from inorganic matter. As late as the 17th century, there were recipes to "create" life. Take sweaty rags, wrap them around wheat, and set them in an open jar. In 21 days, you'll "create" mice. For rats, just throw garbage in the street. In a few days, rats will take the place of the garbage. All over the world, in Europe, Asia, Africa and the Americas, mankind was formulating recipes for "creating" bees, lice, scorpions, maggots, worms, frogs, etc. In 1668, Francesco Redi publicly opposed the idea of Spontaneous Generation. While it was generally accepted that rotting meat generated maggots, Redi disagreed. He maintained that maggots hatched from eggs laid by flies. To test his hypothesis, Redi performed one of the first known experiments to utilize a "control group." Thus began both the death of Spontaneous Generation and the birth of the modern era of scientific development. Redi placed meat in three flasks -- one open, one sealed and one covered with gauze. Maggots appeared in the open flask, as the flies were able to reach the meat. Maggots did not appear in the sealed flask or the flask covered by gauze. At the time, this experiment was not thought to disprove Spontaneous Generation. It merely proved that maggots did not come from meat. Origin of Life - Spontaneous Generation For millennia, the Origin of Life was thought to be the result of Abiogenesis (also known as "Spontaneous Generation").
So for centuries, ordinary, churchgoing Christians believed in abiogenesis. It was only after Darwin that it became a heresy.
Jan Meeus's Mathematical Astronomy Morsels (I forget whether it's vol I or II) has a good description of the phenomena, but doesn't go so far as to analyze the Laplace Resonance. I'd read references in many places to things like "all the moons cannot be on the same side of Jupiter", but Meeus was the first time I saw the details.
Most excellent story! POOF!
Your first link was useless. I could only find a biography of Batten, I couldn't get to his article. A Google search on the full title of the article brought me back to the TJ index.
The second link has an interesting thing to say:
It should be noted that when it suits them, evolutionists argue that life is nothing but chemicals, but then they claim that living things are exceptions to the laws of thermodynamics that describe the behaviour of chemicals (a position completely refuted by The Mystery of Life’s Origin). This shows the inconsistency of their materialistic religion.
It is hard to read beyond this because it is so incredibly ignorant. There are no exceptions to the laws of thermo. Whoever wrote this conveniently forgot that life utilizes a constant flow of energy to maintain its structure, while (of course) increasing the entropy in its environment.
"Materialistic religion" Cheap rhetoric, divorced from reality. Suitable, perhaps, for apologetics, but not for anything scientific.
Plowing through the rhetoric, finally something about the nylon-eaters:
In fact, more than one species of bacteria have the ability, residing on plasmids. This suggests that the information probably already existed, and was just passed between different types of bacteria.
"Suggests". Perhaps they should actually find it in wild species.
"Already existed". Ditto.
All that would be needed to enable an enzyme to digest nylon is a mutation causing loss of specificity in a proteolytic (protein-degrading) enzyme.
The mutation occurred in an enzyme needed for carbohydrate metabolism, not protein metabolism. Maybe they're talking about a different bacteria. I'll stick to the one described in the article I linked to. It also has an in-depth discussion of the plasmids angle.
Loss of information would reduce the effectiveness of its primary function, but would enable it to degrade other substrates, too. Since both nylon and proteins are broken down by breaking amide linkages, a change in a proteolytic enzyme could also allow it to work on nylon.
1) It's an enzyme for breaking down carbo, not protein
2) We're talking about a **frame shift mutation** here. It leads to a totally novel protein - the sequence after the mutation bears no relation to the original. It's not like tweaking hemoglobin to make it carry oxygen better; it has no relationto the original sequence.
If this process were continued, the result would be a general enzyme with a weakly catalytic effect on the hydrolysis of too many chemicals to be useful where much selectivity is required.
Depends on the environment - if there is an abundance of nylon, natural selection will favor any mutations that are more specialized.
To reiterate my major points:
1) There was a frame shift mutation. This rendered the bacterium effectively unable to live off of carbohydrate, and would normally be fatal.
2) In the environment it's in, however, it flourishes.
3) The "new information" is the novel protein resulting from the frame shift mutation. It wasn't recognized as information until it happened in a nylon-rich environment.
I'm surprised at your question. Surely by now you must have grasped the situation. The creos (by that I'm speaking of a very few, like Hovind and his followers, not religious folk in general) have only one goal -- to bash Darwin and his theory. That's it. They don't care about proposing any alternative theories, they don't care about science, or education, or freedom, or reason, or even life itself. Just bash Darwin. That's their whole deal. And once you recognize that, you will re-evaluate a whole lot of things around here.
"Why should anyone let your lot into science class except as remedial students?" was a rhetorical question. I realize that if you let them in as students they'd only disrupt the class and wouldn't learn a thing.
And make life miserable for everyone else. In this, they've taken a cue from trial lawyers and Democrat welfare tax recipients -- whine enough and people will give you what you want to shut you up.
They [extreme creos like Hovind et al.] don't care about proposing any alternative theories, they don't care about science, or education, or truth, or honor, or freedom, or reason, or even life itself.
When the Days Were Shorter
Alaska Science Forum (Article #742)
November 11, 1985 | Larry Gedney
Posted on 10/04/2004 10:31:59 AM PDT by SunkenCiv
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/1234919/posts
I have a Theory, “No Sun, No Life on Earth”
Where’s my Nobel Prize?
One could conjecture that without the moons gravity
continually distorting the earths crust our core might
have solidified and we would just be an icy ball of dirt.
One could, but one would have zero reason to make the conjecture.
[from the topic article above] Four billion years ago, when life began, the Moon orbited much closer to us than it does now, causing massive tides to ebb and flow every few hours.
[from 2004/1985] Present-day nautilus shells almost invariably show thirty daily growth lines (give or take a couple) between the major partitions, or septa, in their shells. Paleontologists find fewer and fewer growth lines between septa in progressively older fossils. 420 million years ago, when the moon circled the earth once every nine days, the very first nautiloids show only nine growth lines between septa. The moon was closer to the earth and revolved about it faster, and the earth itself was rotating faster on its axis than it is now. The day had only twenty-one hours, and the moon loomed enormous in the sky at less than half its present distance from earth.When the Days Were Shorter | Posted on 10/04/2004 10:31:59 AM PDT by SunkenCiv
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.