Yet another old-earther accuses a creationist of believing in evolution

Creation Ministries International ^ | 4-12-2016 | Nick Sabato

[BroJoeK]

Continuing in that same vein...:

angryoldfatman: "And you called all my info out of date, even though I referenced Nick Lane in my link.
Why did you out-of-hand assume my info was out of date, BroJoeK?"

Because you referred to Miller-Urey as if it were the current standard on experiments for abiogenic origins of life.
Now, so it turns out, even you knew that is not the case, and yet you clearly left the wrong impression.

angryoldfatman: "A straw man is a distortion of an opponent’s position used to easily refute it.
What position have I distorted and how?"

Well... which of the many straw-men arguments posted here have you opposed, FRiend?

angryoldfatman: "Even as late as 1980, the experiment was used in Carl Sagan’s Cosmos as an affirmation of the question of OOL being solved."

I'd say, any time you misrepresent someone's argument, in order to make it easier to refute, you're using a "straw-man" argument.
And that's just what you're doing here, since nobody ever claimed Miller-Urey "solved" anything, merely suggested that certain organic compounds can & do occur naturally.
Indeed, such compounds have been observed floating in interstellar space, but they certainly "prove" nothing regarding abiogenic origins of life.

So, if you misunderstood what you were taught, that's your own fault, not science's.

However, the two books I recommend in post #84 above do discuss more recent experiments which do come much closer to life's origins than Miller-Urey ever claimed.

angryoldfatman: "There are also 21st century textbooks that tout the 'primordial soup' hypothesis and show illustrations of the Miller-Urey experiment without a hint of its inaccuracy in simulating primordial atmospheric conditions."

As a metaphor, there's nothing particularly wrong with the "primordial soup" idea.
And since we don't know precisely which conditions were most likely to work, "primordial soup" is as good a way as any to think of it.

What Miller-Urey does demonstrate is organic chemicals growing naturally, a fact which has been observed and is therefore assumed in any recent origin of life experiments.

[BroJoeK]

angryoldfatman: "I said that microorganisms could, given deep time and evolution turn into those three creatures: elephants, blue whales, and humans."

But, remember, we are playing the anti-evos word-definition game, and so, strictly speaking, that never, ever happens.
In fact, no species ever, presto-change-o, becomes through evolution something altogether different.
Germs don't become elephants, no matter how long you're willing to run the experiment.

The reason is, there are necessarily millions of intermediate steps, each of which makes relatively minor changes, and the accumulation of such changes over Deep Time are what create vast numbers of species we see today.

But anti-evos love to mock science by saying, in effect: "germs don't become men, dogs don't become birds, or fish".
And of course, strictly speaking, that is 100% correct.

angryoldfatman: "What are the limitations on what evolution can do?"

I certainly could not list them all, but one in particular seems important: evolution cannot "see ahead", meaning develop an answer for which there is not yet a question.
For example, if the question is, "how can an organism see better?", then evolution's answers will involve changes to eyeballs or perhaps to a brain's pattern recognition abilities.
By contrast, for example, a swamp-dwelling reptile will not suddenly grow wings and fly into the trees, unless it first learns to earn its living by climbing to high places, and perhaps jumping down on its prey.
Then the ability to stay air-born longer & further can provide competitive advantages, and naturally select for such creatures.