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Noah's Ark found?

Marcus said:
Those are some excellent points. A believer with sufficient Faith can simply close his ears, of course, but that type of argument could have an influence on those still open to reason. It's always hard to resist variations on the "you're such an idiot" argument, but I'm sure an approach like this would be more productive.
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It really hit home after an incident at work a couple of years ago. We had an 18 year old coop student, extremely bright, frighteningly quick on the uptake with software development who, one day posted a bunch of creationist podcasts to the company network, and sent out an email to the entire engineering department talking about this stuff that he had found interesting.

I could have replied that I demand it be taken down, with a copy to HR, and that he should never, ever do that again, and in person told him I didn't appreciate him posting religious drivel on company resources. I'm sure it wouldn't have happened again, and it's possible he might even have been fired, but that seemed an unsatisfying response. Instead, I politely replied that I believed it was a violation of company policy, that people of other religions would consider it offensive, that I had taken the liberty of erasing their files, and that I would like to spend a lunch hour talking about the subject with him.

Here was a kid who was genuinely curious about such issues, and was very bright, but just didn't have the tools to analyze the issue. I decided to try and help him gain the knowledge he needed, rather than calling him a fool.
 
Soapy Sam said:
Did it work?
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It's hard to say. Of course, he didn't say, "You're right. Evolution must be true." However, it was obvious that I had brought up some things he hadn't thought about before, and put some questions into his head. I don't know the long term outcome in part because the recession hit six months later and his employment was terminated.
 
Meadmaker said:
It's hard to say. Of course, he didn't say, "You're right. Evolution must be true." However, it was obvious that I had brought up some things he hadn't thought about before, and put some questions into his head. I don't know the long term outcome in part because the recession hit six months later and his employment was terminated.
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God moves in mysterious ways innit
:D
 
154 said:
EinsteinMarduk, where exactly did the non-living organic become alive?
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Scientists don't know and neither do the creationists. The difference is that scientists aren't happy until they solve the problem, whereas creationists are perfectly content with saying "Goddidit" and leaving it at that.

Steve S
 
I do want to say a very big thank you to Vortigern99 for the excellent description of the processes of abiogenesis.

Wonderful - and I even managed to understand much of it! :)

It's very sad that 154 can't see the value of what you wrote - but of course, he must sneer at it as he couldn't read it - it might cause him to think.....

Probably not, though.

As the saying goes - you can't reason somebody out of a position they didn't reason themselves into.

But - thanks again - at least I appreciated the effort.
 
Here's an analogy that might work for you 154:

Look at a rainbow. At what point exactly does the blue become green? At what exact point does the violet become magenta? It is a little bit blurred, isn't it? So it is with the progression from non-life to life.

Just because people like to classify these things into discrete categories doesn't mean that nature has to comply.
 
Vortigern99 said:
Radrook, I'm well aware human beings are prone to error and fraud. The point you seem to be missing is that these mistakes were found and corrected using science. Once more we see the scientific method ultimately excel over ignorance, career pressure, laziness and greed (or whatever the frauds' motives were) every time. What's your point again?
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Bolded: What "demand" do you speak of? Who placed it on you? Can you quote someone making this demand, or provide a link to what must be an external site in which this uncritical person demanded that "you have 100% certainty] in current theories"? Because I assure you I made no such demand, either in writing or in my intentions. What was your point here again?



Yeah, okay, but what does that have to do with this discussion? I totally agree with everything you're saying in this post, and I've never said or thought otherwise, since the time in my adolescence when I began to study how science works. What, again was your point with regard to this specific discussion?




Right, okay. Thanks for keeping those scientists on track. Meanwhile, in this discussion which we are actually having, I gave a bulleted summary in incomplete sentences of the current thinking on abiogenesis. It's not a scientific paper, and doesn't require the careful wording required in such papers. The single line I posted, "Please keep in mind that each of the following assertions are based on numerous studies conducted in a variety of different scientific disciplines", coupled with a basic understanding of science which should have been taught in grade school, is sufficient for the rest of us to understand that this is the current thinking on the matter based on the best evidence we have. Feel free to add that italicised proviso in front of every statement anyone makes, ever, under any circumstances, so that we can all avoid, in the future, your time-wasting sidebars admonishing us to state the bleeding obvious.



First, allow me to apologize. I rarely resort to name-calling, but I found "dingbat" to be a mild and somewhat amusing way of saying that I find your statement "Changing of mind weakens trust and credibility whether it be secular or religious" to be utterly without merit. Anyone making that statement is not in full possession of critical thinking skills, and misunderstands the scientific method. With that said, I won't call you a "dingbat" again.

And, since I find arguing with you a waste of time, I won't likely address you again, unless you say something so outrageously absurd as "Changing of mind weakens trust and credibility whether it be secular or religious", which I assure you will elicit an immediate rebuttal.
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All your arguments are based on your assumption that I'm against the scientific method, ignorant of the scientific method and consider the scientific method worthless. That's what makes this whole discussion pointless. This is not the first time I encounter this tendency and know that it will only persist. You also have the persistent annoying habit of constantly claiming not to understand and inability to assume what is meant, and a knack for suggesting that what is meant is an absurdity. Then there is your so-called apology barbed with snide remarks. So in view of your chosen modus operandi which I lack the patience to deal with I guess this discussion is over.
 
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Brainache said:
Here's an analogy that might work for you 154:

Look at a rainbow. At what point exactly does the blue become green? At what exact point does the violet become magenta? It is a little bit blurred, isn't it? So it is with the progression from non-life to life.

Just because people like to classify these things into discrete categories doesn't mean that nature has to comply.
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Or this one:

At exactly what point does a caterpillar become a butterfly? We know there existed proto-butterfly, but it is obviously not a butterfly. It looks completely different. The proto-butterfly spins a coccoon. We don't see it for a while. Then suddenly a butterfly appears. The obvious answer is that during that time while we don't see it, God does some magic and creates a butterfly. Otherwise you'd have Butterfly appearing from No-Butterfly, and that is totally illogical.
 
A caterpillar doesn’t become a butterfly!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
A caterpillar “is” a baby butterfly.
If you dissect a butterfly larva (caterpillar) you’ll find all the immature features that we know as belonging to a butterfly, already in place.
 
Tricky said:
Or this one:

At exactly what point does a caterpillar become a butterfly?
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For that matter, we could ask at exactly what point two gametes become an organism. Sperm and egg meet, and a zygote is formed. People talk about the "moment of conception", but in reality, it isn't a moment. It's a process, and while it happens quite rapidly (seconds? milliseconds? I don't know) there is not one, single, precise, moment of time when it occurred.

Such an event is considered one of great spiritual significance, and I'm not saying it shouldn't be, but it still isn't a binary event where there is a single instant of time when it happens.
 
Vortigern99 said:
LIFE

  • Fatty acid vesicles are permeable to nucleotide monomers, but not polymers.
  • When spontaneous polymerization occurs within a vesicle, that polymer is trapped inside.
  • Floating in the ocean, a polymer-containing vesicle encounters convection currents, for example hydrothermal vents.
  • (Fatty acid vesicles are stable under near-boiling conditions.)
  • High temperatures separate polymer strands and increases the vesicle membrane's permeability to monomers.
  • Once the temperature has cooled again (because the fatty acid has moved by ocean currents away from the vent), spontaneous polymerization occurs.
  • This cycle repeats.
  • Each polymer increases the osmotic pressure (caused by a difference in the amount of solutes between solutions that are separated by the semi-permeable membrane), due to the surrounding ions within a vesicle. This stretches the membrane.
  • A vesicle with more polymer will "steal" lipids from a vesicle with less polymer -- again due to simple thermodynamics.
  • This is the origin of competition for resources.

SUMMARY: Monomers diffuse into fatty acid vesicles. Monomers polymerize, copy any template. Heat separates polymer strands, increase membrane permeability to monomers. Polymers attract ions, increasing osmotic pressure. Pressure on membrane drives its growth at the expense of nearby vesicles containing less polymer.

THE BEGINNING OF EVOLUTION

  • Vesicles grow into tubular structures. Mechanical forces cause the vesicles to divide.
  • "Daughter" vesicles inherit the polymers from "parent" vesicles.
  • Polymer sequences that replicate faster come to dominate the population.
  • Early genomes were random, containing no information.
  • The ability to replicate, regardless of sequence, drove growth and division of fatty acid vesicles.
  • Any mutation that increases the rate of polymer replication is therefore selected for.
  • Beneficial mutation + Natural selection = increased information.
  • One early beneficial mutation was to change the sequence to contain only the most common nucleotides.
  • Another was not forming secondary structures that block replication.
  • Another was to form sequences that are stable, yet separate easily.
  • Another was to form secondary structures that show enzymatic activity.
  • Like RNA, early nucleotides could store information and function as enzymes.
  • Early polymer enzymes would enhance replication; use high-energy molecules in the environment (near thermal vents) to recharge monomers;synthesize lipids from other molecules; and modify lipids so they don't leave the membrane.

CONCLUSION

Thus we have a simple two-component system that spontaneously forms in the pre-biotic environment, can eat, grow, contain information, replicate, and evolve through thermodynamic, mechanical and electromagnetic forces. No supernatural forces, no ridiculous improbability, no lightining into a mud puddle, no "springing from rocks" or dust. Just chemistry.
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What is all this mumbo jumbo supposed to prove exactly? That God did not do it, just because we can figure out some of how it happened? How shallow. Say your wife say makes a pie...because you can figure out the ingerdients and temperatures, you believe the pie simply appeared, without your wife first planning what to make and what ingredients/proportions to use, and then making it?

Don't you people listen?....that there is a heirarchy proven by: moon, Earth, solar system, galaxy, universe,...GOD!!!! It is obvious.

Oil reserves did not just happen. The miracle of concrete did not just happen. The miracle of steel did not just happen. The miracle of clear glass from opaquer sand did not just happen. The spectrum did not happen out of sheer luck enabling us to see things in beautiful color including all the pretty flowers or even your wife with make-up on. Didn't JUST happen! Corrective lenses or hearing aids or binoculars/telescopes or microscopes did not just happen. Laughing and crying did not just happen. Leverage-hydraulics-gear ratios did not just happen. Math and geometry laws did not just happen. Sexual PLEASURE did not just happen. Artificial refrigeration did not just happen. Lighters did not just happen. Vacation paradises did not just happen. Radio waves, short waves, x-rays allowing us to have crystal clear television and radio from even round the world...and to show what our bodies look like inside, did not all just happen!!! Rain cycle, underground aquifer, magnetic shield, ozone, the tides.

Etc., etc., etc., etc....and all you people except 154 thinks this just did it on it's own accord, from luck? In a hostile universe, no less, with either a million degrees F or absolute 0?...and this incubator( a miracle in itself right there!) of an Earth enable all this to happen...by no driving force of intelligence(God)? That we think we are smarter than the combined force of the Universe?, to think nothing higher than man just might be responsible for this?

And you guys think YOU are the intelligent ones, while me and 154 are idiots. Even though it is us who knows how to connect the dots! And it is millions or billions of dots!...all pointing to a supreme intelligent force or creator.
 
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I have to keep reminding myself that the purpose of JREF is not to try to reclaim idiots like Iamme, Radrook, and 154, but to try to prevent them in the first place, to try to steer budding woo away from the abyss of ignorance.

These three and their ilk are lost.

Their posts serve only to scare away those who might still be made sane.
 
Translation:

Special pleading, arguments from incredulity, arguments to authority, appeal to supernatural to explain the personally incomprehensible. Red herrings. Lack of scientific understanding, laziness overriding capacity to independently research and verify claims, mind closed against the standards of evidence and the scientific method. In short: Unsupportable hogwash.


Iamme said:
What is all this mumbo jumbo supposed to prove exactly? That God did not do it, just because we can figure out some of how it happened? How shallow. Say your wife say makes a pie...because you can figure out the ingerdients and temperatures, you believe the pie simply appeared, without your wife first planning what to make and what ingredients/proportions to use, and then making it?

Don't you people listen?....that there is a heirarchy proven by: moon, Earth, solar system, galaxy, universe,...GOD!!!! It is obvious.

Oil reserves did not just happen. The miracle of concrete did not just happen. The miracle of steel did not just happen. The miracle of clear glass from opaquer sand did not just happen. The spectrum did not happen out of sheer luck enabling us to see things in beautiful color including all the pretty flowers or even your wife with make-up on. Didn't JUST happen! Corrective lenses or hearing aids or binoculars/telescopes or microscopes did not just happen. Laughing and crying did not just happen. Leverage-hydraulics-gear ratios did not just happen. Math and geometry laws did not just happen. Sexual PLEASURE did not just happen. Artificial refrigeration did not just happen. Lighters did not just happen. Vacation paradises did not just happen. Radio waves, short waves, x-rays allowing us to have crystal clear television and radio from even round the world...and to show what our bodies look like inside, did not all just happen!!! Rain cycle, underground aquifer, magnetic shield, ozone, the tides.

Etc., etc., etc., etc....and all you people except 154 thinks this just did it on it's own accord, from luck? In a hostile universe, no less, with either a million degrees F or absolute 0?...and this incubator( a miracle in itself right there!) of an Earth enable all this to happen...by no driving force of intelligence(God)? That we think we are smarter than the combined force of the Universe?, to think nothing higher than man just might be responsible for this?

And you guys think YOU are the intelligent ones, while me and 154 are idiots. Even though it is us who knows how to connect the dots! And it is millions or billions of dots!...all pointing to a supreme intelligent force or creator.
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