Replies

The truth is that no one knows much about the creation/existence of life...

For some reason this can't be admitted. I guess it's a pride thing.

Must you accuse evolutionists of being prideful and lying by omission? This comes up in nearly every thread. Scientists freely admit that no one knows exactly how life began and that it is highly unlikely physical evidence will ever be found.

...evolutionary theory is an attempt to explain the origin and diversity of various forms of life.

That statement is incorrect. As I said, this comes up in nearly every thread. Please remember that evolutionary theory is only an attempt to explain the diversity of life, but not the origin of life.

Scientists freely admit that no one knows exactly how life began and that it is highly unlikely physical evidence will ever be found.

Are these the same scientists who argue against allowing criticism of evolutionary theory in government schools?

That statement is incorrect. As I said, this comes up in nearly every thread. Please remember that evolutionary theory is only an attempt to explain the diversity of life, but not the origin of life.

That's news to me. We learned about Miller's experiments and panspermia in gov't school biology in the late '70s. It was included in the unit on evolution. Evolutionary theory is also commonly understood as including explanations for the origin of life. And rightly so, since neither evolutionary theory nor origin of life theory will admit of the possibility of supernatural causality. They're logically related.

"Please remember that evolutionary theory is only an attempt to explain the diversity of life, but not the origin of life."

If that is true then why does evolution postulate Universal Common Ancestry? If it (a) does not postulate the origin of life, and (b) cannot _prove_ the links between the kingdoms (or even between many groups of animals within the kingdoms, like turtles and bats), then why is universal common ancestry part of evolution?

The doctrine of universal common ancestry would make sense if there were a theory of abiogenesis which required it. However, without one, the only reason to suppose universal common ancestry is materialist philosophy.

http://crevo.blogspot.com/2005/04/overselling-universal-common-ancestry.html

Scientists freely admit that no one knows exactly how life began and that it is highly unlikely physical evidence will ever be found...

From TalkOrigins: Probability of Abiogenesis FAQs

"biogenesis is the field of science dedicated to studying how life might have arisen for the first time on the primordial young Earth. Despite the enormous progress that has been made since the Miller-Urey experiment, abiogenesis is under constant attack from creationists, who continually claim that the origin of life by random natural processes is so unlikely as to be, for all practical purposes, impossible. Following are some articles that challenge this claim and demonstrate the fundamental misconception at the core of the creationists' arguments.

Lies, Damned Lies, Statistics, and Probability of Abiogenesis Calculations: How likely is it that even a single bacterium could form by chance in the primordial sea? Not very likely, that's for sure, and creationists have been only too happy to provide ludicrously huge numbers purporting to be the odds against such a thing. However, even if these calculations are correct, they are irrelevant, as modern theories of abiogenesis require nothing of the kind to happen. This article briefly illustrates what abiogenesis really is and shows why the creationists' probability calculations do not matter.
Borel's Law and the Origin of Many Creationist Probability Assertions: Creationists have asserted that a statistical principle called "Borel's Law" mathematically demonstrates that abiogenesis is impossible. This article explains what Borel's Law is and shows that Borel himself clearly understood that his law was not relevant to the probability of the origin of life.
Spontaneous Generation and the Origin of Life: Creationists often claim that Louis Pasteur disproved spontaneous generation and hence any naturalistic origin of life. This article shows what Pasteur really demonstrated and gives a history of the subject from early ideas of spontaneous generation to modern ideas about the origin of life.

As I said, this comes up in nearly every thread. Please remember that evolutionary theory is only an attempt to explain the diversity of life, but not the origin of life.

"Darwin did not propose a theory of the origin of life in the beginning... Evolutionary theory was not proposed to account for the origins of living beings, only the process of change once life exists. However, many have thought that the theory of evolution logically requires a beginning of life, which is true. Of those, many have thought that a natural account of the origin of life is necessary, and some have proposed models which have borne up or not as research proceeds. " [emphasis mine] Spontaneous Generation and the Origin of Life

You can't have it both ways.

Cordially,