Why do educators lie?

[zooterkin]

Somebody needs to make up bumper stickers that say: Abiogenesis Is A Completely Separate Concept From Evolution. Since Inorganic Matter Did Become Organic, We Know It Took Place. Also, There Have Been Many, Many Experiments Verifying Different Stages Of Abiogenesis. And The Fact That Something Is Not Completely Understood Right At This Moment Does Not Mean That God Did It. By The Way, The Definition Of "Life" Is Flexible. Viruses Are Not "Alive" Like We Are. So Demanding That Life Must Have "Started" At Some Point Is Logically Unwarranted. But Please Believe In God If It Makes You Happy. That's Your Own Business. Just Don't Ask Science To Validate Your Personal Feelings Because That's Not How It Works.

That wouldn't leave room on the bumper for the "My other vehicle is a Winnebago too" sticker...

 

[Dinwar]

I'd go with the shorter, more to-the-point "Learn what's been done in a subject before spouting off about it." I'm not sure of the OP is a Creationist or not (if the author is, it's obviously of the Old Earth flavor, but it's unclear). What I DO know is that the author hasn't taken the time to learn about the surge of research in this area over the past, let's call it two decades or so.

 

[Wowbagger]

I have no vested interest and simply do not care what mechanism exists whether it be just browning motion, a Frankenstein force, a higgs life on particle, whatever, but it is a fact that there is nothing in science to explain how this could have ever happen yet day after day in science book after science book they pretend that it does and this is simply wrong.

We do know what a LOT of the mechanisms behind the beginning of life probably were. I would link you to articles about RNA World and other abiogenesis theories, but you stated you were not really interested in them. That is too bad. Because, reading about them would show that the books were not lying!

Of course given enough time/instances anything could happen

Within reason, this might be true. But, it is a woefully inadequate explanation for life. Delving into the causes of life: Both 'ultimate' big-picture trends, and 'proximate' little details, are much more interesting than laying it all on inevitability and/or probability.

The mechanism will be found and a nobel prize given

Several mechanisms are being worked on. Read about RNA-World for an example. The problem is a tough one, but NOT an insurmountable or impossible one. We know a lot more about the plausible beginnings of life, today, than we did a year ago, and a lot more than 10 years ago, etc.

Life isn't black & white half alive things exits everywhere

This is the option I voted for, though I fail to see how it is relevant to the discussion. There is a continuum of life forms: proto-cells, viruses, bacteria, cell colonies with early forms of specialization, multi-cellular entities, etc. Where one puts the "half-way" mark is a matter of preference. But, there are identifiable stages in the development of life.

Though, it is worth mentioning that none of them were guaranteed to happen. If, for some reason, there was no survivable niche in specializing cells, then multi-cellular entities would not have formed, or at least not have lasted very long.

I am a creationist so my opinion doesn't count

This, above all other options, certainly does NOT apply to me, at all, what-so-ever.

 

[Dancing David]

I fully accept evolution as absolute fact with one aggravation that has bothered me for 23 years. what bothers me isn't that there isn't an answer but that every educator I have ever met has to LIE about it.
...
The common story of the pieces coming together bit by bit over billions of years simply does NOT stand up to skepticism. Science is supposed to follow the scientific method and therefore be testable and repeatable....

Uh huh, sure, well we will see if this is just drive by post or if you actually want to discuss the current theories of abiogenesis, but I doubt you really know much about science.

If you demand testable and repeatable, you just don't get about half of science.

Are we supposed to make a type I super nova for you too?

 

[Dancing David]

What energy would be required? Heat, light, sound? The medium doesn't have the building blocks the dead cell does!

What energy?

i mean can you be vaguer?

So you are here to make opaque rants and not discuss?

Sunlight, geothermal?

 

[Dancing David]

ok, so nasa's astrobiology think tank now says life came here probably on a meteorite so much, much, much older than 4 billion years. Talk about moving the goal posts! Oh well it still doesn't answer anything no matter how much time you give it there still has to be an INSTANT when what you say isn't alive becomes alive and all this stemmed from my sons elementary text book that does not contain the word abiogenesis ANYWHERE. Prob cause it contains the word genesis and this is indiana LOL

So it is just ranting?

When did NASA become the researchers into abiogenesis?

Oh just random fact attrition.

I don't suppose you want to discuss the difference between elementary textbooks and science at all?

Does waving your arms help you to discuss?

 

[Dancing David]

my son is 10 4th grade They have a real good chapter on the scientific method in his book though and I don't think any of it applies to Abiogenesis. Could you please demonstrate an experiment that I can replicate that it does please.

Can you make me a Type I super nova?

If your definition of the scientific method comes from a fourth grade text book, you may have some stuff to learn.

 

[genesplicer]

Gosh, I feel so bad now, realizing I have been lying to my students for the past 20 years. When we are studying evolution and they ask how life got started, I say "We are not sure yet, but we are working on some promising ideas." then I discuss a couple of ideas that scientists are currently considering. What a liar I am.

 

[stilicho]

....

There is simply no plausible mechanism for the initial formation of the first life.

....

That's pretty simple all right.

 

[Dinwar]

What energy would be required? Heat, light, sound?

This really illustrates your lack of knowledge on this topic. Life arose about 3.9 billion years ago. This puts it about 50 million years before the end of the Hadean, according to the 2009 USGS timescale. The Hadean was the most violent period of Earth's history--the only thing that will EVER reach that level of destruction and devistation is when the Sun eats our planet whole. Everything from mechanical energy, to thermal energy, to sound, to radiation (we're talking nearly everything pouring out of the newly-formed Sun--stuff that'd give you a sunburn in seconds, and fry you to a crisp before you could sufocate in the atmosphere, which had only barely-detectable traces of oxygen in it). "Hadean" is an apt term for it--it's the closest thing to Hell that you can get in reality.

They have a real good chapter on the scientific method in his book though and I don't think any of it applies to Abiogenesis.

This is actually a common complaint against the historical sciences (history, geology, paleontology, astronomy, etc). It's also completely wrong. The thing is, experiments aren't done in labs by guys in white coats, at least not all the time. In the historical sciences, "experiments" are often natural events. We test our ideas about mass extinctions by finding mass extinctions in the fossil record and analyzing what happened before and after them. We test our theories about galaxy formation by lookingat quasars. We test our ideas about abiogenesis by looking at what happened, and analyzing the data that's in the rocks. This sounds different from physics experiments in labs, but at its roots this method is no different.

 

[BenBurch]

Somebody needs to make up bumper stickers that say: Abiogenesis Is A Completely Separate Concept From Evolution. Since Inorganic Matter Did Become Organic, We Know It Took Place. Also, There Have Been Many, Many Experiments Verifying Different Stages Of Abiogenesis. And The Fact That Something Is Not Completely Understood Right At This Moment Does Not Mean That God Did It. By The Way, The Definition Of "Life" Is Flexible. Viruses Are Not "Alive" Like We Are. So Demanding That Life Must Have "Started" At Some Point Is Logically Unwarranted. But Please Believe In God If It Makes You Happy. That's Your Own Business. Just Don't Ask Science To Validate Your Personal Feelings Because That's Not How It Works.

That. I will need a bigger bumper.

 

[Ocelot]

I fully accept evolution as absolute fact with one aggravation that has bothered me for 23 years. what bothers me isn't that there isn't an answer but that every educator I have ever met has to LIE about it. There is simply no plausible mechanism for the initial formation of the first life. I’ll round up and say 4 billion years for the first life on earth. Now I don’t disagree that at some point hydrophobic lipids could of made a ring and a speck of dust could of got in there blah,blah,blah, I know you know the rest.

Specifically what lie is it that they tell in your experience.

My educators simply said that we don't know how the initial spark of life happened but that there are some interesting theories that might account for part of that story.

Would you class that as a lie? I certainly don't

The common story of the pieces coming together bit by bit over billions of years simply does NOT stand up to skepticism.

It does not stand up to confirmed observation either.
1) Confirmed observation of numerous sources of radiometric dating all converging on the solar system having formed 4.5 Billion years ago
PLus 2) The confirmed observation of stromatolites in rock show that early life was present 3.5 billion years ago.

http://jrscience.wcp.muohio.edu/fieldcourses06/PapersMarineEcologyArticles/Stromatolites.html

Take into account that the early solar system was hostile to life and we have in fact just around 300 million years not billions of years available for this to happen.

Science is supposed to follow the scientific method and therefore be testable and repeatable.

The word you're looking for is falsifiable. There's lots of science that isn't repeatable in the lab. Take for example astrophysics. We don't have stars in the lab. We have computer models but not actual stars. We can predict that stars of a certain size will have certain lifespans but waiting the hundreds of millions of years to verify this directly is not practical. We want results a little sooner than that. However the theories of stellar evolution do make falsifiable predictions that can be tested. For example it has been predicted that no white dwarf will be found that exceeds 1.4 solar masses. Since that prediction has been made many white dwarves have been discovered each of which could have falsified the theory. None have. So the theory stands.

In the case of abiogensis we have the directly testable assumption that abiotic processes can create organic monomers. This was tested in 1953 by Harold Miller and Stanley Urey. The formation of the amino acids lead to some interesting results. Mainly that some amino acids form in preference to others when formed abiotically. These then would have been the building blocks available to make early proteins. Hidden in the genetic code of life are records of some of the earliest processes shared by all life. These seem to confirm that the earliest process to evolve, those shared by all life forms (e.g. the codon coding system) share this preference for the same amino acids predicted to have been more prevalent in this model of a primordial soup.

So let’s start with a single cell that is alive. If we kill that cell evolution states that given enough time that cell will eventually evolve alive again because all the pieces have already come together, no primordial soup needed.

I'm sorry I don't follow you. I don't think evolution states any such thing. This appears to be a theory of straw constructed for the purpose of being weak and easy to ridicule. I'm sure that;'s not of your doing but whoever you picked it up from is not a competent biologist. In fact it isn't even a theory of evolution it's a theory of abiogeneisis. You'll have heard all about the difference.

Let me simply restate that the theory of evolution is not dependent on any particular theory of abiogenesis being true. If God created the first spark of life evolution is still provably true.

Obviously an event of this kind had to of taken place to bring the non-living alive. There has to be a repeatable testable mechanism for this occurrence. This could never be tested, of course, so we have to take it on faith, which is not science.

This appeal to incredulity does nothing to counter the observations made by many scientists testing many aspects of viable abiogenesis theories.

http://scienceblogs.com/gregladen/2011/07/we_can_know_nothing_about_the.php


We also have the observations that conditions in the early universe were unsuitable for the existence of carbon based life, and that carbon based life exists now. That a transition occurred from one state to the other is not an article of faith, it is an observation. Now it may be that this transition required divine intervention, the infinite regress of intelligent assistance or a sequence of events of such staggering improbability that they could only have occurred in an infinite universe. Nonetheless it happened as sure as I sit here.

More likely however is that a sequence of more probable events explains the transitions as an accumulation of gradual and stable increments towards recognisable life.

May I recommend my own little attempt at such a narrative.

http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showpost.php?p=6232883&postcount=265

Here is a scientific test of the initial formation of the first life form that CAN be done:

In a self-contained, sterile but life supporting medium, place a freshly killed cell and wait 4 billion years. Unfortunately that is nothing but a thought experiment. To convert this thought experiment to an actual one we have to convert the 4 billion years to 4 billion instances so that we would only have to wait a year. So if we did this experiment with 4 billion cells and waited 1 year do you honestly think one of those cells would come to life?

I have no idea. Nor do you. Are you inputting any energy into the system? You certainly have done little to accurately model the conditions in the early oceans.

Notes
1) You'd need 300 million years not 4 billion in order to match observations.
2) This would only speak to the probability of these abiotic chemicals self assembling in one spontaneous step and then in the unfavourable conditions that there was only just exactly enough of each constituent as for the assembly to be possible.

Lets say that we ran the experiment and found that you required 300 billion of these pre-cells, before one of them self assembled with the one year timeframe. Would that tell you that to have that happen in a mere 300 million years there should be expected to be 1,000 habitable planets were it took longer? Or if the cell failed to form as your hunch suggests would that simply mean that your model of abiogenesis is primitive and unrepresentative of any natural process that we expect to have feasibly happened and that another model is required.

It would appear that your fellow scientists concur as they do have other models which do not require such a single step.

I have no vested interest and simply do not care what mechanism exists whether it be just browning motion, a Frankenstein force, a higgs life on particle, whatever, but it is a fact that there is nothing in science to explain how this could have ever happen yet day after day in science book after science book they pretend that it does and this is simply wrong.

Please quote a science book that you feel is in error on this.

Darwin wasn't sure whether all life was descended from a single common ancestor and left room for the divine.

There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved.

Evolution is real undeniable force but it can only happen after life has started. Evolution does not explain how life started because evolution requires natural/sexual selection which can only happen after there is a self-replicating cycle. Evolution is only half the story and to miss label evolution and use the process to explain what it doesn’t is simply wrong and I believe it qualifies as it’s own pseudoscience. I understand the need to shut up the creationists and the intelligent design folks, but to just say evolution does what it simply can't just plain wrong and I really want someone with an intelligent skeptical mind to acknowledge this.
Who thinks life will "just happen" given enough time/instances?

You are absolutely correct except in one aspect. The theory of evolution doesn't claim to explain the initial origins of life. (Though the principles of natural selection may apply to early replicating pre-biotic chemistry) The skeptical and scientific mind already acknowledges this.

It is a mischaracterisation to claim that it does and if indeed that is what is being taught then that is wrong. However I've yet to see evidence that this is the case.

 

[Ocelot]

Gosh, I feel so bad now, realizing I have been lying to my students for the past 20 years. When we are studying evolution and they ask how life got started, I say "We are not sure yet, but we are working on some promising ideas." then I discuss a couple of ideas that scientists are currently considering. What a liar I am.

I'm stunned by the concordance between what I wrote about what I was taught and what you said you teach.

 

[Irony]

I think his idea might come from the make-up of the NASA Astrobiology "think tank". It's got associates in about twent-five universities, and I'm sure any one of them making any sort of hypothesis might be offhandedly referred to as being an associate or being part of the NASA group. I could find nothing formally linking any such speculation to NASA. (Mind, I didn't spend all night searching - just thirty minutes or so.)

Again, sounds like a talking point brought in for reasons of further slanting the discussion. I'm still smelling ID, here.

Given what he's said, I think it far more likely that he's completely misinterpreting what someone said. Perhaps he heard about the discovery that organic molecules are fairly common in space and simply doesn't know the difference between "organic molecules" and "living things".

 

[rwguinn]

That. I will need a bigger bumper.

I don't think I can even get it on the tailgate of my F-150.
I'ts worth a try, though....

 

[Complexity]

Bad poll - there isn't an option I can check.

 

[Dinwar]

Given what he's said, I think it far more likely that he's completely misinterpreting what someone said.

This isn't the first time I've heard of the idea. And it's not irrational--it's possible that life could have arisen first on some other planet, then was transported to Earth. It just doesn't get around the issues of how life arose, and what life is to begin with.

In the case of abiogensis we have the directly testable assumption that abiotic processes can create organic monomers.

We also have indirectly testable assumptions about metabolism. A lot of early fossils are chemical trace fossils--meaning that we find isotopes in ratios that are impossible for the environment of the time to produce inorganically. Only metabolic processes can do it. It's a well-established concept in Phanerozoic paleontology (leads to LOTS of errors in isotopic ratios, which are both annoying, as you have to adjust your wiggles to account for what you're dealing with, and useful, because it tells you what you're dealing with [C3/C4 plant studies use this all the time]). This allows us to test predictions about what metabolic pathways were followed when. We can also test hypotheses another way: if they require certain conditions, and the conditions weren't available (say, the process requires the complete absence of free oxygen, but trace amounts were present in the environment that the processes supposedly happened in), we know the hypothesis is wrong.

There's all kinds of ways to test these predictions. And we're doing them all the time. It's just that this is a fundamental question that has plagued humanity for millenia--finding the answer is not simple, and requires people who understand pretty much all of biochemistry AND geochemistry AND structural geology AND sedimentology AND.....and any one of these fields can take a lifetime to learn. To say the least, it's tricky.

 

[nomuse]

my son is 10 4th grade They have a real good chapter on the scientific method in his book though and I don't think any of it applies to Abiogenesis. Could you please demonstrate an experiment that I can replicate that it does please.

Make a star.

A simple experiment, right? A necessary validation for the theory of stellar formation and solar fusion, right?

Oh, then I guess since there isn't any such experiment in the back of any of my Astronomy texts, then those texts are "lying" as well.

 

[fuelair]

I fully accept evolution as absolute fact with one aggravation that has bothered me for 23 years. what bothers me isn't that there isn't an answer but that every educator I have ever met has to LIE about it. There is simply no plausible mechanism for the initial formation of the first life. I’ll round up and say 4 billion years for the first life on earth. Now I don’t disagree that at some point hydrophobic lipids could of made a ring and a speck of dust could of got in there blah,blah,blah, I know you know the rest.

The common story of the pieces coming together bit by bit over billions of years simply does NOT stand up to skepticism. Science is supposed to follow the scientific method and therefore be testable and repeatable. So let’s start with a single cell that is alive. If we kill that cell evolution states that given enough time that cell will eventually evolve alive again because all the pieces have already come together, no primordial soup needed. Obviously an event of this kind had to of taken place to bring the non-living alive. There has to be a repeatable testable mechanism for this occurrence. This could never be tested, of course, so we have to take it on faith, which is not science.

Here is a scientific test of the initial formation of the first life form that CAN be done:

In a self-contained, sterile but life supporting medium, place a freshly killed cell and wait 4 billion years. Unfortunately that is nothing but a thought experiment. To convert this thought experiment to an actual one we have to convert the 4 billion years to 4 billion instances so that we would only have to wait a year. So if we did this experiment with 4 billion cells and waited 1 year do you honestly think one of those cells would come to life?

I have no vested interest and simply do not care what mechanism exists whether it be just browning motion, a Frankenstein force, a higgs life on particle, whatever, but it is a fact that there is nothing in science to explain how this could have ever happen yet day after day in science book after science book they pretend that it does and this is simply wrong. Evolution is real undeniable force but it can only happen after life has started. Evolution does not explain how life started because evolution requires natural/sexual selection which can only happen after there is a self-replicating cycle. Evolution is only half the story and to miss label evolution and use the process to explain what it doesn’t is simply wrong and I believe it qualifies as it’s own pseudoscience. I understand the need to shut up the creationists and the intelligent design folks, but to just say evolution does what it simply can't just plain wrong and I really want someone with an intelligent skeptical mind to acknowledge this.
Who thinks life will "just happen" given enough time/instances?

Do you understand the difference between a process with high probability of being correct and a random guess? Do you know what browning movement is (I have to assume you believe Elizabeth Barrett is changing location OR you mean Brownian movement)? Do you have specific books of any repute in mind that state the lipid ++ thing IS the proven process with no dissent or possible alternatives? Can you list one or three for us to check on? Can you give survey choices that are rather less misleading and more applicable? Please return this questionaire with rapidity. Yours in excess, fuel

 

[nomuse]

Now I have the image of a poet in full Victorian-era gown being pushed back and forth in random, jittery motion by the tiny impacts of gas molecules.