Most atheists do not know what science says about our origins

Status
Not open for further replies.
Why is there such a great objection to the presumption that science says that we we are all descended from a bacterium?

Isn't the most recent common ancestor an individual as in the definition I provided?

Is there another definition either for LUCA or MRCA that doesn't focus on the individual?

I understand that DOC makes some unwarranted conclusions about atheists' knowledge of the LUCA, but I still think that the rejection of his premise that science says all life is descended from one, single, individual organism to be premature given the definition of MRCA as an individual from which all the members of a species are descended and the description of the LUCA as the MRCA of all life. However, acceptance of his premise does not require acceptance of his conclusion, as it simply does not logically follow from the premise at all.
 
mijopaalmc said:
Why is there such a great objection to the presumption that science says that we we are all descended from a bacterium?
Click to expand...

Simply put, there is no scientific consensus on that. It is possible that there was one single bacterium, it is possible there was a population of them. There is no consensus either way.
 
quixotecoyote said:
Simply put, there is no scientific consensus on that. It is possible that there was one single bacterium, it is possible there was a population of them. There is no consensus either way.
Click to expand...

So how does referring DOC to the LUCA hypothesis (I'm using "hypothesis" because you claimed a lack of consensus) help him to understand that he is in error?
 
DOC said:
Yes, its quite simple. If that "one" single solitary organism (let's call him Mr. A) had died for some reason. All the plants and animals and humans and dinosaurs etc. would not have evolved from it. And you or I wouldn't be here. We all came from that one organism (according to the theory). What don't you understand about that. There was a "first" one celled organism and all plants and animals came from that "first" single organism. If the theory says something else than articulett and meadmaker were wrong and you need to tell us how articulett and meadmaker were wrong.

I get the impression that some of you would believe -- Oh, if that first one cell bacteria had died there would always be another one down the line to come along. That's very unlikely. That's why modern science with all its technology can't create a simple one celled organism from organic matter. Only God can create a one celled living organism -- if indeed, that's how He chose to create man instead of creating him instantly.
Click to expand...

DOC said:
To meadmaker, this is what I mean when I say that most atheists do not know that all plants and animals came from the "same" one celled organism (a bacterium) according to the current theory of mainstream science.
Click to expand...

DOC, mainstream science does not claim we came from one, single, individual organism, but a single kind of organism. Mainstream science also understands that it is possible that we came from one, single, individual. This is why you are wrong. Science does not make the claim you think it does.
 
As explained before-- the error is one of nuance--but his assertion wasn't made for discussion. It's like saying humans came from monkeys. Humans and apes share a common ancestor... but today's monkeys are as far away from that ancestor in time as we are... maybe moreso given the fact that they breed at earlier ages. What we define as bacterium today may not be what existed in the past. All of today's bacterium have been evolving for billions of years...they change generations much quicker than humans do. I think scientists are more saying we have a microbial common ancestor and we are figuring out the nature of that ancestor-- by looking at what all genomes have in common. We know they share the same code and they all replicate with double helixes--but the ancestor may not have--which would make it not a bacterium by today's criteria.

But DOC wasn't interested in what was wrong with his statement or what was true about it-- his point was merely to make an inference about the absurdity of science as though that might make his non-stated hypothesis more likely.

He does what all creationists do. He starts threads with an inference disguised as a discussion topic or a question-- but he doesn't want either. He wants to infer that science is absurd therefore his god makes more sense (in his head anyhow.) It's the same as Kirk Cameron laughing at the notion that we come from apes or slime. It's an attempt to throw scrutiny off your own unsupportable hypothesis by making science sound absurd or incomprehensible. Crocoduck. A distraction. He's pretending to clarify some big news--but it's a crocoduck.( crock-o-something)
http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showthread.php?t=81800&page=2
http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Crocoduck
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r5J0cSnYnFg
http://richarddawkins.net/social/index.php?mode=article&id=34

What existed back then--does not exist today... and life forms were too small to even make fossils--and organic matter degrades over time. So we have to piece together what the last common ancestor was by working backwards from all the genomes that exist today. We've been slowly working our way back. We know the most about things we have fossils and DNA for. We have to put the other pieces together because only their most successful progeny exist today... and they may have been undergoing replication for more than a billion years...with increasing success over the eons. Even the most microscopic of life forms have pretty substantial genomes--
 
Last edited:
Taffer said:
DOC, mainstream science does not claim we came from one, single, individual organism, but a single kind of organism. Mainstream science also understands that it is possible that we came from one, single, individual. This is why you are wrong. Science does not make the claim you think it does.
Click to expand...

The LUCA hypothesis suggests otherwise, if the MRCA is really an individual.
 
DOC said:
Yes, like Isaac Newton and the ardent Catholic Louis Pasteur.
Click to expand...

Really? Isaac Newton and Louis Pasteur wrote about how life came to be? They wrote your bible? They wrote scriptures?

Here, I had thought they were people who were furthering actual scientific knowledge while believing or trying to believe whatever the clergy of the time demanded (and Newton was very into alchemy as well)-- but their beliefs didn't seem to affect their science. And in those days--you believed or at least pretended to believe, because science hadn't come up with the facts yet, and you could be killed if you denied the faith. Before Darwin, any creation story made sense to the kiddies and you could suffer forever if you didn't believe --after the discovery and decoding of DNA, we learned the real story, and creation stories were relegated to the brainwashed, ignorant, fearful, and the trusting but naive.
 
Last edited:
articulett said:
He wants to infer that science is absurd therefore his god makes more sense.
Click to expand...

Actually, I'll be satisfied if those, who didn't know, now know that mainstream science says all plants and animals are descended from the same single bacterium (aka LUCA). How this single bacterium (aka LUCA) came into existence is up for debate and is not really the focus of this thread.

And if you understand the above paragraph, then its your decision (not mine) as to how it affects your religious or philosophical views. If you think its absurd that you and your relatives came from a bacterium, that's your right. And if you don't think its absurd, that's your right also.
 
Last edited:
DOC said:
Actually, I'll be satisfied if those, who didn't know, now know that mainstream science says all plants and animals are descended from the same single bacterium (aka LUCA). How this single bacterium (aka LUCA) came into existence is up for debate and is not really the focus of this thread.

And if you understand the above paragraph, then its your decision (not mine) as to how it affects your religious or philosophical views. If you think its absurd that you came from a bacterium, that's your right. And if you don't think its absurd, that's your right also.
Click to expand...

The problem is the word bacterium... the last ancestor would not have been a bacterium as we know a bacterium today--which is why no scientist is using it. It's why no scientist says that we came from monkeys. Our common ancestor primate might well resemble today's monkeys, but they are not today's monkeys. It appears we are closer to archea than bacteria...though some classify them as the same. But if you want to say it in a way that makes it sound more absurd to you, then that is your right. I suppose you are one of the people that says people came from monkeys, too, right? Although a scientist would not say that because it is misleading more than it is clarifying. So is your statement--but you do that on purpose. You are inventing the crocoduck and then using it's non-existence as proof that your alternative unsupported hypothesis has some validity. That's fine. If you don't think that's absurd or that we see right through you--that is your right as well. All creationists sound the same. They always think they have the zinger of an inference, because it magically works for them, but they don't understand their own ignorance and the reason their "logic" works for them is because of their strong need to believe that their preacher man has explained it better than science.

By the way, our most recent common ancestor with apes was not a monkey, it would have been an ape--tailess... and we have lots of those types of skeletons...even other bipeds... that we are not direct descendants of. They died out. We are learning more and more through fossils and DNA and you are stuck with the talking snake story brought to you by faith.
 
Last edited:
And yes--I'd like EVERYONE to know the facts-- and learn how they can understand them for themselves-- what a genome is--how yours came to be-- how we know what it tells us--how it must be so.

I think it's cool to know that behind the last common ancestor of all humans alive today (and that human was not the only human or the first human and could not have known he'd have spawned all of us and all of our knowledge and all of our languages, religions, and technologies)--we all share the exact identical ancestry back in time. THAT is a fact. I think it's a fact with understanding for yourself. What we understand from looking at today's humans and today's apes in the genome is applicable for each branch of the family tree. The technology we use to determine paternity is the same technology that tells us how closely related two species are and how far back in time they shared a common ancestor. It's the same thing! It's much more exciting and interesting and fact filled then your assertion that we all come from a single bacterium (which is trillions of generations away from todays bacteria, and probably wouldn't fit our very young human definition of bacteria.) It had DNA--or at least RNA templates-- that were copied-- we know this happened before in two different lines that later became mitochondria and chlorplasts-- but there were others-- but it was the eukaryotes that became the experts at evolving complexity evolvers. All the big life from worms to mushrooms to us-- have common ancestry that is identical as they meet up and march back in time. Dawkins' Ancestor's tale is a great source for anyone interested in what we know and how we know it and anyone who cares about amassing the great genome resources on line where humans share this most exciting information brought to us entirely through mortals and their expert information gathering, assimilating, and sharing capabilities which allow them to take it further.
 
DOC said:
And if you understand the above paragraph, then its your decision (not mine) as to how it affects your religious or philosophical views. If you think its absurd that you and your relatives came from a bacterium, that's your right. And if you don't think its absurd, that's your right also.
Click to expand...
I agree, people should know what arguments are made if the hold to certain beliefs.

Do people really want to worship a god who frequently kills children for the inconsequential reasons? Do people really want to worship a god who demands that they be cannibals?
 
Taffer said:
Yes. The hypothesis also is not universally accepted by mainstream science, therefore DOC's claim that it is is false.
Click to expand...

Actually, LUCA is mainstream science, but it's NOT saying that the last ancestor was a bacterium as much as apologists like Mijo would like to pretend it is. Bacteria are species that exist today... they evolved from bacteria-like ancestors--as did we...but we wouldn't call those things bacteria as we define bacteria today--because they weren't. As simple as we think of bacteria to be, they've been evolving for a lot longer and a lot more generations than we have.

But pay no attention to Mijo-- he is a creationists and he's doing what DOC is doing but more subtly. He's confusing rather than clarifying and defending creationists and the creationist position as he always does. He readily starts similar threads with silly inferences and ignores all answers to his queries while saying nothing of value on the topic. We have a common microbial ancestor-- we are still trying to figure out the nature of it. We've recently learned that vertebrates (from which our brain arose) and invertebrates have a common worm like ancestor.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/06/070629101101.htm

Now, these were not today's worms--worms, too, have been evolving for eons-- but we understand that they were what we'd call a worm due to features we use to describe worms.

And all our worm-like ancestors would have been identical for all of us. As would our microbial ancestors-- but they are NOT the microbes we see today-- they are their ancestors of trillions of generations back in time.
 
Last edited:
Somehow it seems all to come down to this:

Many years ago I read an interview with George Wald after he won his Nobel Prize. He remarked that genetically, we resemble yeast more than we differ from it.

I say, "WOW," and Doc says "Yuck!"
 
joobz said:
I agree, people should know what arguments are made if the hold to certain beliefs.

Do people really want to worship a god who frequently kills children for the inconsequential reasons? Do people really want to worship a god who demands that they be cannibals?
Click to expand...

Yeah, and shouldn't they read and assess all scriptures and all faiths and all representatives of those faiths since none of them have any actual measurable evidence. Not only should people learn the facts that we've been cool enough to amass-- but they should learn the histories and facts associated with DOC's faith and everyone else's--how they are equally likely to be true given the evidence for their claims. They might not want DOCs version if they read the bible. I think the Eastern mystics have much nicer science-friendly faiths with reincarnation instead of the "life is a faith test" silliness. That sounds so much more moral. What sort of loving father does a pass-fail test on his kids with some nebulous rubric requiring their credulity and ignorance and makes them suffer forever if they fail?
 
bruto said:
Somehow it seems all to come down to this:

Many years ago I read an interview with George Wald after he won his Nobel Prize. He remarked that genetically, we resemble yeast more than we differ from it.

I say, "WOW," and Doc says "Yuck!"
Click to expand...


You should see how many genes we have in common with yeast and what we've learned from the little buggers.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/08/070829143603.htm

Hence on the basis of currently available data it seems that the most basic underlying principles and strategies used by the genomes of higher organisms to regulate gene expression are quite close to those used by simple organisms like bacteria and yeast.

I'm telling you, I hope DOC does pique the curiosity of those who want to know want humans are learning. I always wonder how creationists explain this stuff--that science is making it up?.. that the devil is tricking them? Do they just not read or absorb the information? Not see the implication and vastness of the research and data? Are they that brainwashed? Or do they tell themselves that god is behind it all and letting humans in on the secret finally? Are their brains purposefully not comprehending, so that they can keep their faith alive?
 
Last edited:
bruto said:
Somehow it seems all to come down to this:

Many years ago I read an interview with George Wald after he won his Nobel Prize. He remarked that genetically, we resemble yeast more than we differ from it.

I say, "WOW," and Doc says "Yuck!"
Click to expand...
No
it's more like He says,
"LA LA LA! I'M NOT LISTENING!!!!"
 

Attachments

  • 378777b~Chimpanzee-with-its-Fingers-in-its-Ears-Posters.jpg
    378777b~Chimpanzee-with-its-Fingers-in-its-Ears-Posters.jpg
    12.9 KB · Views: 2
Status
Not open for further replies.

Back
Top Bottom