How about God came first and His Mum and Dad bought him a toy soldier kit and that's us.
No. The toy soldier kit came first, then god came afterwards.
Dunno 'bout genius, exactly, but equally plausible, and neither more nor less plausible than the religionist proposition.
Well, guess you took it wrong then. Sometimes the simplest of statements contain the most pround knowledge.
There well may be a basic conceptual failing somewhere.
Timber,
No harm, no foul (pardon the pun).
No need to agree in order to get along - just gotta agree to disagree - agreeably
Aw geeez, this is getting sappy.
Well, I like it a whole lot more than arguing.
There's a big difference between quarreling and arguing. I ain't fond of quarreling, but I'm always up for a good argument. Hard to find folks able to maintain the distinction, though. With some subjects, its hard to find folks who are able to press a good argument, even if they can maintain the distinction between quarreling and arguing.
farmerman wrote:Gracious me. I go out to cut and split sum farwood for a coupla days and I miss out a whole bushel Of stuff
Ive actually been in a panel with Behe and he is quite comfortable to have it both ways. Believe it or not, He does not deny natural selection , he tries only to keep his main points at the level of microbio and molecular bio.
. When confronted with clear fossil evidence (which, Im sad to admit does require the minutest amount of creativity and ability at inferential reasoning), he sharply stands and supports natural selection. He doesnt try to make it a "one size fits all" . He is that much of a scientist. He takes a lot of criticism for that because, in the field of evolutionary bio, the rule is "If I can show it happening once, Ive proved my point" He feels that his data support hissown concept of Irreducible Complexity in the 2 cases (used to be 3) he uses as proofof intelligent design. Jon Mcdonald from U Del has often taken his biochem quite apart and left Behe with no door in his corner. Mcdonald has a web page but if yer interested, yer smart enougfh to google it.
You really need to see him(Behe) in person, not as a result of pussied up responses from Discovery Institutethat RL posted. Behe is not that much of a lout to use words like "The erroneous system of Darwinian evolution" That is not him talking. That must be an "imprimatur' from Disc Inst. Behe is sometimes irreverant, has a good mind, is highly qualified, and, of course, in this area , we think hes dead wrong. But to make him a dumass satan, hes worth more than that. In some areas that Behe will resort to natural selection is where we have proof uncontested from the geologic record. Behe stands firmly behind the data that shows that species are not immutable , and that mammals and dinosaurs rose from reptiles and birds and dinosaurs are related (with the only argument, who came first). RL , if he understood Behe better would steer clear of his science because it refutes most of what RL tries to convince us of.
BEHE has no possible way to explain lifes re-appearance as a result of catastrophic environmnetal events and resultant mass extinctions during prehistory. He cannot honestly lay that upon an Intelligent Designer, he has no evidence. Hes honest enough to recognize that "the Designer" would then be an impish constant "fiddler" that uses cataclysm as his test tube. He cant support that with any evidence. Right now his remaining evidence is the cascade of enzymes in blood clotting and cilia and flagella. His response to these points is that Irreducible complexity adds some other options to origins of life. Thats about all hes adding to the debate. Hes like Hoyle in that respect. However, I know for a fact that Behe is totally flummoxed by having to deal with all these remora -like hangers on who have turned his attempt at "science" into another gospel.
His responses to the above cited critiques that RL posted are weak responses wherein, because theyve been spruced up by the Discovery Institute, he uses the "citing the citation" argument rather than dealing with the subject at large. If youve ever read "letters to the editor" in some small town papers, A discussion and rebuttal and sur-rebuttal can go on unchecked for weeks and the readers, peripheral to the subject, and who are reading the letters expecting to learn something, are, instead, treated to a waterfall of "names and dates with little substance. Alas , Behes responses to Ken Miller are like that (and he mostly misses the point about how the mousetrap grew (of course as an invention) from a simple snare to a snap snare, to a trap. Behe was just a little miffed at Miller and Raups "beerfest" critique of a mousetrap going from a doorstop to a papreweight, toa tie clip, to a mousetrap. Each stage providing a jumping off point to the next.Youd have to follow the details of the very debate and , most of us cant (and truly dont give a rats ass) to follw . After all, its not NASCAR.
Hi Farmerman,
Glad to hear you had a good time listening to Behe. Can't say I've read him extensively, but he raises some interesting points I think.
Let me ask you, what is the minimum amount of time that you think the Earth had to exist in order for evolution, as you understand it, to have had enough time to occur?
rl. The data is what the data is. Im not evading anything , but the present earth and its physicalchemical domain was what resulted in life and its many turns. I cant speculate as to what would be a minimum time for evolution to occur.
The fact that Al Witt and others have found pyrimidines and cytosine and pyrenes and other nucleotides and PAHs in the spectra of star clusters has obviously impacted all our theories . Ive even modified my own support of the anti-Russian thinking of("No aboitic CnHn compounds)
From "bucket chemistry" we know the Fischer Tropsch process can, in a hydrogen/carbon environment, with lots of iron for catalysis, be responsible for PAH formation in a low O2 environmnent. Adding N and S and P is easy in a double energy system (like a series of stars colliding or a galaxy "sweeping" past another galaxy.
With all our new generations of multispectral telescopes in the sky,We are seeing evidence of past "PAH" and nucleotide formation, in galaxies way far away. What happened here is happening elsewhere.
Since the formation of life is dependent upon a balance of chemicals.I dont think that there is a minimum time (except in the production of the life web we are familiar with, here on earth)
The earliest evidence from our own world is that rougly 700 MY after the formation of our solar system, life was already beginning. We infer this from formations in which the ratio of C12 /C13 is >10 and that sediments are enriched in C13 because life is taking up the C12. Itindicates that C12, preferred by living organisms was being taken up in prokaryotic cells as early as 3.8 Ga. Eukaryotic cells based on direct sedimentological evidence , seemed to have occured about 2.1Ga. These eukaryote values may be overestimated because they cluster around certain bacterial "mats" that formed around the flanks of ancient glacial deposits, giving mnay researchers the hypothesis that environmental stresses were responsible for the eukaryotic cell.
All this is merely "reporting the news" We understand that, from ironstone deposits and oxygenated sediments that the overall "engine " of the development of life was availability of free oxygen and we have direct evidence that the appearnce of life's growing number of forms, were a direct consequence of the available oxygen. Also, the "rapid evolution" that appears at large extinction boundaries is also a function of rapid declines and reappearance of free oxygen in amounts that varied from as low as 9% to as high as 30%.
Ah, "real life" sticks his head up again.
"real life," you've never answered the simple question i posed to you.
What is your unassailable circumstantial evidence for a creation, for a creator?
Set,
That's an easy one! Look in the mirror! Can't you be considered circumstantial evidence?
You provide no circumstance which supports such a contention.
So, "real life," what's you answer to this question?
What is your unassailable circumstantial evidence for a creation, for a creator?
Setanta wrote:You provide no circumstance which supports such a contention.
So, "real life," what's you answer to this question?
What is your unassailable circumstantial evidence for a creation, for a creator?
What is your standard of proof?
