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Quotes critical of evolution

wollery said:
T'ai, when the top of the hole is at the level of your head, it's time to stop digging!
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So you deny that all of those things are designed? You think fans, paint cans, wallpaper, paintings, etc., have no design.
 
T'ai Chi said:
My beliefs or lack of aren't on trial. I'm only interested in the science.
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You owe me a new irony meter. I don't know why, apart from not thinking the three mouse clicks were worth the energy I haven't put your worthless "contributions" to this discussion on ignore yet.
 
Foster Zygote said:
Sorry, I like how right off the bat you imply that those who support your position are smart and humble, and thereby also imply that those who differ from your position are not smart and are also arrogant.
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I just don't understand why there is such certainty in the scientific establishment that one day we will discover how life came into existence. I think the current generation of scientists should take note of Stanley Miller's experience. At p. 138 of his 1996 book, "The End of Science", John Horgan states: "In fact, almost 40 years after his original experiment, Miller told me that solving the riddle of the origin of life had turned out to be more difficult than he or anyone else had envisioned."

Foster Zygote said:
Please point out where I made the assumption that Earth is the only planet in the universe on which abiogenesis has occurred.
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You were using that assumption as a fall-back position: "Even if we assume an average of only two planets per galaxy (remember some elliptical galaxies contain trillions of stars so that's a very conservative value for n) being suitable for the development of life that still gives us at least a couple of hundreds of billions of chances for abiogenesis to occur. Add to this a time span of billions of years and we can see that even if abiogenesis is extremal improbable then it is not too improbable for it to have happened at least once in the universe."

Foster Zygote said:
I still don't see how this supports your assertion that the experiment in question was hailed as one of the greatest discoveries of all time by the majority of the biological science community and that research into the origins of life from organic molecules has ground to a halt. Urey/Miller was certainly seen as a promising and tantalizing result but you've failed to support your claim that scientists seriously thought that this placed them at the brink of solving the abiogenesis problem.
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I think you'll find that was the consensus in the late 1950s. And I haven't said that research into the origins of life from organic molecules has ground to a halt, only that it hasn't moved the ball forward.

Foster Zygote said:
The quote you give above even states "...taking the first step that may lead a century or so hence to the creation of something chemically like beefsteak or white of egg."
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Considering that we're now more than halfway to a century from 1953, how does that prediction look now? How about Miller's idea that there would be amino acid factories?

Foster Zygote said:
You're right. They should all just give up. If they haven't yet discovered it then it's plain that it will never be discovered. All meaningful scientific advances have been accomplished, from start to finish, in just a few years. Biologists should stop investigating the matter and simply shrug and say "I guess Goddidit".
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No, but they shouldn't make the same mistake that Miller and so many others made in the 1950s and assume they will eventually solve the problem.
 
T'ai Chi said:
So you deny that all of those things are designed? You think fans, paint cans, wallpaper, paintings, etc., have no design.
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Tai, by your logic if I smash a piece of sandstone up I've 'designed' the resulting cloud of powder.

I suggest you define 'design'.
 
T'ai Chi said:
So you deny that all of those things are designed? You think fans, paint cans, wallpaper, paintings, etc., have no design.
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Missing the point as usual!:rolleyes:

T'ai Chi said:
You're the one claiming science here. Got details?



My beliefs or lack of aren't on trial. I'm only interested in the science.
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Then please explain, scientifically, how design doesn't end in a "turtles" explanation.
 
Slimething said:
To paraphrase a famous quote: the reason we see so far is that we stand on the shoulders of giants.

Many people feel a smug satisfaction of knowing more than our antecedents, almost as if we, the present generation, are somehow superior in our faculties. .
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I never said they were lesser in their faculties. Indeed, they were as smart as all get out.

However, they did not have our capabilities. That's not smugness, that is just the fact of the matter (although we would likely not have the capabilities we have today if not for them - that's where we stand on their shoulders).

40 years ago they did not know the makeup of the human genome. Today we do. They did not have the ability to synthesize DNA or peptides in a rapid fashion, so they could not carry out mutagenic studies to determine the role of each residue or nucleoside. Even if they could make the mutants, they did not have the ability to do electrospray ionization mass spectrometry, so they could not do proteomics studies of the fate of biological molecules. They couldn't sit at a desk top computer and view a 3D representation of a protein. These are all things that are being done routinely today.

I think pretty much every field could give you the same story. 40 years ago, they were not capable of doing the things we can do today, and 40 years from now, they will be able to do things we can't. And the things they do that we are currently doing, they will do it better. If there is "smug satisfaction," it is with the process of science and technological advancement that makes this increase in knowledge inevitable.
 
T'ai Chi said:
The main google.com page doesn't list quotes that pertain to being critical of evolution like

http://www.pathlights.com/ce_encyclopedia/20hist12.htm

does.

Since this is a science forum, and evolution, and its criticism, are scientific topics, this is the place to post it (as opposed to google.com link).
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Let me try again - what is YOUR point? Do you have an opinion on the comments? Just posting a link and saying "this is interesting" is one way guaranteed to get me to not bother clicking on the link.
 
Dancing David said:
Just for fun, I'LL Agree, after all tail fins on cars were designed and serve no useful purpose.
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A few did. The Jaguar D-type had a fin for high speed stability at LeMans. Wait a minute. T'ai Chi was right all along!
 

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Ugh. That warped logic is used on all fundy sites.

They point to all things designed by HUMANS, and then point to anyting in nature and say THAT must have a designer too.

Um. Just because stupid humans can design a watch or a coke can does not mean that a tree must therefore have a designer too. That leap of logic boggles my mind every time.

I wonder when something is so uncomplex that it doesn't need a designer? What does the designer start with? Molecules? Or did the designer design those first?

Well, nature can do the same, all on its own.
 
Rodney said:
I think the smart ones with a sense of humility have already figured it out -- it's too improbable to have happened by chance.
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Patently false. Nothing is "too improbable to have happened by chance" except for things with a probability of zero. No matter how small the probability, if the probability is more than zero then it could have happened by chance.
 
Rodney said:
I just don't understand why there is such certainty in the scientific establishment that one day we will discover how life came into existence. I think the current generation of scientists should take note of Stanley Miller's experience. At p. 138 of his 1996 book, "The End of Science", John Horgan states: "In fact, almost 40 years after his original experiment, Miller told me that solving the riddle of the origin of life had turned out to be more difficult than he or anyone else had envisioned."
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I just don't understand why cretinists keep having to conflate "very difficult" with "impossible." We do many things daily that are very difficult; why should this one eventually turn out any different? How easy is it to manufacture a Core Duo processor? Yet, we make them by the million. And I'll tell you, having worked in the industry, that it's "very difficult."

So is making a souffle'.
 
Rodney said:
How about this one?

"To their chagrin [scientists] have no clear-cut answer, because
chemists have never succeeded in reproducing nature's experiments on the
creation of life out of nonliving matter. Scientists do not know how
that happened . . Scientists have no proof that life was not the result
of an act of creation."/—*Robert Jastrow, The Enchanted Loom: Mind in
the Universe (1981), p. 19./
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Well, check the quote mine project (quote #70). If you do, you'll find out that not only has that been peiced together out of order, it clearly misrepresents the authors meaning. The actual quote is:

"Scientists have no proof that life was not the result of an act of creation, but they are driven by the nature of their profession to seek explanations for the origin of life that lie within the boundaries of natural law. They ask themselves, "How did life arise out of inanimate matter? And what is the probability of that happening?" And to their chagrin they have no clear-cut answer, because chemists have never succeeded in reproducing nature's experiments on the creation of life out of nonliving matter. Scientists do not know how that happened, and, furthermore, they do not know the chance of its happening. Perhaps the chance is very small, and the appearance of life on a planet is an event of miraculously low probability. Perhaps life on the earth is unique in this Universe. No scientific evidence precludes that possibility.

But while scientists must accept the possibility that life may be an improbable event, they have some tentative reasons for thinking that its appearance on earthlike planets is, in fact, fairly commonplace. These reasons do not constitute proof, but they are suggestive. Laboratory experiments show that certain molecules, which are the building blocks of living matter, are formed in great abundance under conditions resembling those on the earth four billion years ago, when it was a young planet. Furthermore, those molecular building blocks of life appear in living organisms today in just about the same relative amounts with which they appear in the laboratory experiments. It is as if nature, in fashioning the first forms of life, used the ingredients at hand and in just the proportions in which they were present."
 
Bob Klase said:
Patently false. Nothing is "too improbable to have happened by chance" except for things with a probability of zero. No matter how small the probability, if the probability is more than zero then it could have happened by chance.
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Is that the slender reed you're clinging to in your belief in abiogenesis? And, if so, how is that distinguishable from a miraculous creation?
 
Schneibster said:
I just don't understand why cretinists keep having to conflate "very difficult" with "impossible." We do many things daily that are very difficult; why should this one eventually turn out any different? How easy is it to manufacture a Core Duo processor? Yet, we make them by the million. And I'll tell you, having worked in the industry, that it's "very difficult."

So is making a souffle'.
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So when do you forecast that life will be created in a laboratory?
 
Rodney said:
Is that the slender reed you're clinging to in your belief in abiogenesis? And, if so, how is that distinguishable from a miraculous creation?
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Rodney said:
So when do you forecast that life will be created in a laboratory?
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Dunno why, but for some odd reason people rephrasing statements of others and then transforming them into a question fired back at the conversational partner do raise some suspicion in me.
 
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