The basic assumption of Evolution is tiny changes over time. Are those changes "blind chance", or are they the actions of a loving God? Believers in Evolution can go either way on this.
Maybed finally the smart ones are beginning to confront the snake oil salesmen.
Except that never happened. The writer is doing the same thing he accuses "scientists" from the religion of evolution of doing.
There is nothing unscientific in believing in a supreme being AND evolution (in all its miriad permutations and possibilities).
As a Catholic the 2 are not mutually exclusive.
The Lord works in myterious ways.
This is exactly the scenario given on almost every television documentary and news magazine that most people see dealing with evolution and the origin of life. It was in my public school textbooks and had me convinced.
This nonsensical fantasy is what the naturalistic evolutionist wants the children and adults to believe about the origins of life.
This is also what most children, including myself, were taught in the videos in my taxpayer funded public schools before I went to private school.
The hardcore fantical evolutionists never raised a big objection about this silly fairy tale about the origin of life.
They don't raise a stink and shout it down when public school children are subjected to it or television is full of it.
They only talk about it and bother to mention this foolishness when they tell someone evolution does not deal with the origin of the very first microscopic speck of life.
Then suddenly, for the first time, they express objection. Not objection that this fairytale is taught, but objection that someone who has seen it included in story after story about evolution their whole life would think that evolution deals with the origin of the first speck.
Only then will they find their voice about the subject when blowing hot air on Free Republic, Democrat Underground or the Daily Kos.
So much ado about nothing.
Theres group pressure in science ?
There’s new technologies and new findings that we have to set against scientifical modells to verify them ?
There’s people searching god in their observations ?
What else is new ?
Until today there’s no community as the one once founded by newton and leibnitz - we call it the scientific world - and this community is the only one I know where criticism is a part of the culture as well as experiment and proof.
I would take their findings and their guidelines for our live over those coming out of the vatican and over those of every religion at any given day - allthough and because of how these people deal with global warming and darwins findings and allthough they might be on the wrong track sometimes (but never for long and never without knowing they might be)
Lifestyles. The fruit fly experiments should have been the end of it.
Who indeed? And how do you prove it is who you say it is?
Where to start with this gem...
“Does the term ‘primal soup’ stir any brain cells? It was an experiment by Stanley Miller in the 1950s that claimed to produce life out of a ‘soup’ of chemicals placed into a container full of gases and energised with a swift bolt of electricity.”
The ‘primal soup’ experiment most certainly did NOT claim to ‘produce life’. It claimed to produce large protein molecules, which are potential precursors to RNA and DNA.
Whether or not it exactly reproduced primeval Earth (or some microclimate, as near a volcanic vent) is n”ot so relevant as the general result. A vast array of conditions are no doubt present on the billions of planets throughout the universe.
“But there are deeper questions raised about the theory that life on Earth could have started in such a way. Such questions as where did we come from are answered these days by scientists following principles first proposed in the mid-nineteenth century by Charles Darwin under the all-encompassing umbrella of the Theory of Evolution.”
Somehow we’ve now made the jump from the “origin of life” to the “origin of species”. Darwin never theorized (as far as I can recall) on the origin of life.
“Make no mistake, despite its billing as the enemy of organised religion, for most scientists working today in a whole variety of disciplines, the Theory of Evolution has become a religious system of the highest order. With a set of dogmas firmly entrenched in the past, based around the holy book, “The Origin of the Species”, Evolution is put forward as a mechanism to explain all the mysteries of life.”
My hyperbole meter pegged on this sentence. Evolution is a general theory to explain how life has changed over time. Many details of that process still aren’t well understood. What seems clear from what we can see is that life has changed over time. Any theory of life will have to account for that, as well as a generous dose of Occam’s Razor.
“What it does remind you of, though, is the medieval Church, zealous to protect its dogmas by vilifying the slightest deviation from them and burning “heretics” at the stake.”
Nothing like melodramatic over the top rhetoric. I haven’t seen too many scientists calling for capital punishment of intellectual dissenters lately. ;-)
“A basic assumption of Evolution is that life appeared by blind chance.”
No. Evolution makes no assumption about the origin of life. That is a different area.
It is true that prevailing scientific opinion is that life began through some natural series of events, rather than (say) due to the magic incantations of pink bunnies from Aldeberan. This is mainly since scientists generally don’t invent more elaborate explanations than necessary unless there are supporting facts, as in observable phenomena.
“They argue the case against blind chance and instead introduce the idea of an Intelligent Designer, a controlling presence, creating and guiding life as we know it.”
In which star system did this “ID” originate? Oh, you mean you’re positing an all-powerful, omniscient, supernatural being as the ID? I’m afraid from a strictly scientific viewpoint that is a wild leap of imagination completely unsupported by any evidence. Produce some, and I think you have a much more interesting and compelling argument.
‘In July 2005 more than 400 scientists put their name to the following statement: “We are skeptical of claims for the ability of random mutation and natural selection to account for the complexity of life. Careful examination of the evidence for Darwinian theory should be encouraged”.’
Honest and open inquiry into all facets of nature should be the goal of science. I’m sure most young biologists spend many hours pondering evolution and the details of its various mechanisms. Just bear in mind that any competing theories will have to account for all the evidence, such as the general progression from simpler life forms to more complex in the fossil record. Constant intervention from Aldeberanian pink bunnies seems unlikely.
‘One man, Professor Anthony Flew, has gone further. A firm disciple of Charles Darwin for fifty years, he has done an about-turn in his twilight years. Science “has shown, by the almost unbelievable complexity of the arrangements which are needed to produce life, that intelligence must have been involved” he says. “The argument for Intelligent Design is enormously stronger than it was when I first met it ... it now seems to me that the findings of more than 50 years of DNA research have provided materials for a new and enormously powerful argument to design.”’
The cynic in me says that he’s hedged his bets in his waning years, but I suppose that’s uncharitable... ;-)
However, the statement ‘The argument for Intelligent Design is enormously stronger than it was when I first met it ... it now seems to me that the findings of more than 50 years of DNA research have provided materials for a new and enormously powerful argument to design.’ seems quite unsupported. I’d like to hear his “enormously powerful argument” - where has it been published? What as the reaction been in the scientific community at large?
From my perspective, DNA research has done rather the opposite of what he claims. Artifacts left by ancient retroviruses are evident in DNA, and can be seen matching most frequently in related species, and less frequently in more diverse species. This is thought to correspond to the length of time since the two species shared a common ancestor. What is the ID explanation for these observations?
The fact that over 90% of the DNA in a chimp and a man is the same is scarcely a strong argument for custom, ground-up design of each, is it? Why would chimp and human DNA have many of the same retrovirus artifacts?
“The Professor is sure that there is an Intelligent Designer, but is not going any further. He stops just short of pondering metaphysical issues, but it doesn’t mean we should do the same. Because, If Intelligent Design is a valid alternative to the Theory of Evolution, then who on earth is this Intelligent Designer?”
I vote for Pink Bunnies from Aldeberan. Any other theories?
"Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." - Manuel II Palelologus
What exactly is the theory of “Intelligent Designer”?
The author is a nutcase with demonstratably has ZERO knowledge or understanding of Evloution.
Both are chock full of holes, yet are trumpeted as untouchable by their adherents who claim they have been settled by "scientific consensus". Unfortunately for them, the facts don't bear them out, only their own assumptions do.
I'd be a lot more impressed with this galoot if he actually knew what he was criticizing
read later
I believe in God. I work with genetic material daily. I don’t see why the endless debate is necessary. God is real, and evolution is real. You can have faith and be a scientist.
More lies from the creationist industry.
The Miller-Urey experiment produced thirteen of the amino acids necessary for life from methane, ammonia, hydrogen and water using only electrical sparks.
Ironically no one followed up on this experiment.
Timely post considering Dr. Miller died this year in May.
Ummm... like... ummm... bingo....
Falsehood #1, "It was an experiment by Stanley Miller in the 1950s that claimed to produce life out of a 'soup' of chemicals placed into a container full of gases and energised with a swift bolt of electricity."The Miller/Urey experiment was published in Science magazine and was never claimed or intended to produce life. Miller proposed to test a hypothesis made by Harold Urey that the reducing atmospheres common on extraterrestrial planets would spontaneously produce "organic" molecules if subjected to an energy source. Miller used a gas mixture of hydrogen, methane, carbon monoxide, and water. After just a few days, he discovered that about 11 amino acids had readily formed. By the way, an electrical discharge only travels at one speed. Later studies used many different gas mixtures, and different energy sources such as ultraviolet light, heat and pressure. Miller, Stanley L., 1953 “A Production of Amino Acids Under Possible Primitive Earth Conditions” Science vol. 117:528-529
Falsehoods #2-4. "The idea was that this combination reproduced the conditions all those millions of years ago on Earth when life first appeared and the experiment attempted to do the same thing in a laboratory. Remember it now? Still believe that it's the best explanation of how life came to be? Think again.There is good evidence that the earliest life on earth was close to 3.8 billion years ago. The Miller experiment never intended to reproduce all the necessary, or common conditions on earth at any time. The Miller experiment never attempted to created life. The Miller experiment has been extended, and exceeded in many ways in the last 54 years.
Falsehoods 5-8 "This experiment has, for the last 20 or 30 years, been totally discredited by the scientific community, yet that little gem of information hasn't filtered through to us, or to our education system. Objections include the fact that they made wrong assumptions about the gases and the amount of electricity that would have been needed to make it work. In other words they managed to get most of the experiment wrong.The Miller experiment was never "discredited." In the late 1960s and early '70s some geologists disagreed with the reducing atmosphere hypothesis of Urey. As it happens, the Urey hypothesis of a highly reduced atmosphere was correct all along, and the gas mixture originally used by Miller was correct all along. The "amount of electricity" objection exists only in the imagination of the creationist Steve Maltz and copied by Kimmy. However, the basic results from Miller's 1953 experiment have been repeated with many different energy sources making the creationist's objection merely a sign of ignorance. In fact, for what Miller had proposed, he got it all correct.
Doesn't fill us with much confidence, does it?I don't have any confidence at all in a creationist with so little knowledge.
Falsehoods 9,10 "Yet some school textbooks still feature the experiment and, although others may feature it with a warning that it's not the best fit for the data, it is included because the scientists haven't found a better fit for the data and they had to provide some explanation that reflected their world view!The Miller experiment should be in every school biology book, and the shame is that it is not in every textbook. The Miller experiment was a perfect "fit" as it merely showed what chemicals were produced under the tested conditions. And finally, it is not a question of "world view" unless Mr. Maltz proposes to burn all books which he views as inconsistent with his religious belief. In which case we can toss the Constitution and bring on the Inquisition.