The questions about the first steps of chemical evolution that I raised are not 'preaching', but legitimate problems with abiogenesis. If those first steps are impossible on the primordial earth, then the theory of evolution can't be correct as the true origin of life. I get how your faith in evolution isn't interested in the science which strongly suggests that abiogenesis isn't possible. It results in dissonance that causes you to question your faith in evolution. But the truth is the truth, and we should not be afraid of it, no matter what we put our faith in.Factfinder said:Heard that sermon before. You know this is a debate site, right? I provided evidence behind the theory of divergence through decent. A component of evolutionary theory. Your response is to inject a supernatural agency for wit there is not one scintilla of evidence for support and ramble on about the things not known? Did you read my intro where I provided an explanation on how differently the word 'theory' is used between laymen and scholars? And how cross sections of the different disciplines of science overwhelmingly support the theory of evolution?just_sayin said:I suppose God could have used evolution to create all the creatures on the planet. However, I'm just not sure I have that much faith. In the debate on abiogenesis I mentioned some questions that the faithful believers in evolution don't have workable answers to:
Has anyone ever seen life start from non-life without intelligence guiding it?
Nope.
Has anyone solved the problem of there being no viable mechanism to generate a primordial soup?
No. Scientists use to claim that the reducing atmosphere of the early universe was ideal for life. We now know that was inaccurate. The early atmosphere was probably volcanic in origin and composition, composed largely of carbon dioxide and nitrogen rather than the mixture of reducing gases assumed by the Miller-Urey model. Carbon dioxide does not support the rich array of synthetic pathways leading to possible monomers. As University College London biochemist Nick Lane stated that the primordial soup theory “doesn’t hold water” and is “past its expiration date.”
Sometimes there are appeals to panspermia to try and avoid this issue, but there is no evidence of incoming bacteria, and moon rocks are sterile. Moon rocks should be teeming with bacteria and viruses if panspermia produced life. The science suggests that is not the case.
Has anyone formed the 20 to 22 amino acids that comprise proteins naturally and all in the same environment as would be needed for life?
Nope. The Miller experiment initially claimed 3 amino acids present, and a later review found traces of 3 other ones but in very low amounts. The reason Miller found what he did was because he created a trap to prevent the naturalistic reactions that would have destroyed the amino acids created in a natural environment. That's the catch, the same reactions that create some amino acids are just as likely to destroy them also. So Miller created a trap to prevent nature from doing its thing. When asked where in nature this kind of trap would exist, Miller said he had nothing. Even granting the formation of 6 amino acids by Miller, only 10 have ever been created by naturalistic means from scratch without the use of cells. 20 different amino acids minimum are needed for even simple DNA or RNA.
Since it appears forming polymers requires a dehydration synthesis, have they been created in a puddle naturally without human assistance like Darwin said they could be?
No. The National Academy of Sciences states, “Two amino acids do not spontaneously join in water. Rather, the opposite reaction is thermodynamically favored.” Water breaks down protein chains into amino acids, it doesn't go the opposite direction.
Has the problem with the lack of a viable mechanism for producing high levels of complex and specified information been solved?
No. A bacteria has about 100+ genes and is consider way to complex to be LUCA. In fact scientists claim that LUCA would have had to have about 355 genes to be the ancestor of all known life - even more complex than bacteria or viruses. If you have code (say DNA) you need a means to translate it (say RNA). No one has solved how these could chemically happen especially without one another. While a virus can copy itself - it can't do it without being inside another cell.
Does the RNA World Hypothesis have definitive evidence that it works?
No. A serious problem is that even if you can figure out how to make proteins you need a system to self-replicate. In fact Stanley Miller said "The first step, making the monomers, that’s easy. We understand it pretty well. But then you have to make the first self-replicating polymers. That’s very easy, he says, the sarcasm fairly dripping. Just like it’s easy to make money in the stock market — all you have to do is buy low and sell high. He laughs. Nobody knows how it’s done."
Often scientists have postulated that RNA arose first - yet there are some massive problems with this issue. 1) RNA has never assemble by itself without human guided help. And 2) RNA has not been shown to perform all the necessary cellular functions currently that are carried out by proteins, so it is inadequate by itself to perform these functions.
Further, to explain the ordering of nucleotides in the first self-replicating RNA molecule, materialists must rely on sheer chance. But the odds of specifying, say, 250 nucleotides in an RNA molecule by chance is about 1 in 10^150 — below the “universal probability bound,” a term characterizing events whose occurrence is at least remotely possible within the history of the universe. (See See William A. Dembski, The Design Inference: Eliminating Chance through Small Probabilities (Cambridge University Press, 1998).)
Biochemists have spent decades struggling to get RNA to self-assemble or copy itself in the lab, and now concede that it needs a lot of help to do either.
As New York University chemist Robert Shapiro puts it "The sudden appearance of a large self-copying molecule such as RNA was exceedingly improbable. … [The probability] is so vanishingly small that its happening even once anywhere in the visible universe would count as a piece of exceptional good luck."
Unless the atheist is willing to admit miracles exist, it seems their faith is in vain.
Can the origin of the genetic code be adequately explained by unguided natural processes?
Nope. DNA provides code for how to made a structure, while the RNA reads that and creates what the code calls for. This system cannot exist unless both the genetic information and transcription/translation machinery are present at the same time, and unless both speak the same language.
"[T]he link between DNA and the enzyme is a highly complex one, involving RNA and an enzyme for its synthesis on a DNA template; ribosomes; enzymes to activate the amino acids; and transfer-RNA molecules. … How, in the absence of the final enzyme, could selection act upon DNA and all the mechanisms for replicating it? It’s as though everything must happen at once: the entire system must come into being as one unit, or it is worthless. There may well be ways out of this dilemma, but I don’t see them at the moment."- Frank B. Salisbury, “Doubts about the Modern Synthetic Theory of Evolution,”
"Life’s three core processes are intertwined. Genes carry instructions for making proteins, which means proteins only exist because of genes. But proteins are also essential for maintaining and copying genes, so genes only exist because of proteins. And proteins—made by genes—are crucial for constructing the lipids for membranes. Any hypothesis explaining life’s origin must take account of this. Yet, if we suppose that genes, metabolism and membranes were unlikely to have arisen simultaneously, that means one of them must have come first and ‘invented’ the others.” - Jeff Miller
There are dozens more issues with abiogenesis, yet to the faithful atheist 'even when science says its impossible, trust us, its possible for science." Got to love the complete science denial and science of the gaps logic there.
I'm sure my atheist friends will spend their energies in personal attacks against anyone who dares asks them to take a look at the science. What would be great though is if the faith-filled atheist explained how their belief in evolution explains the many basic and devastating chemical problems of life coming from non-life.
A- I've not said I'm a young creationist. I've only explained how they view the universe.Factfinder said:@just_sayin
Young creationists would say that the universe is the product of a miracle. Miracles by definition do not follow scientific processes, so you could not disprove them by standard scientific observation.
When you break down your arguments this is exactly what you get. So why do you falsely make claims of bringing science to the table that somehow was supposed to back up what you posit?
What we have here is a classic example of a strawman fallacy.ZeusAres42 said:What we have here, folks, is a poisoning of the well. This is a preemptive ad hominem with the sole intention of discrediting the other party before they even say anything in return. With me, for example, just-sayin makes the false implicit claim that I always use AI to do my posts for me, thus implying that I cannot think for myself and/or am not genuine. Now that we have that red flag painted let's get to truth, facts, and reality.just_sayin said:Zeus,ZeusAres42 said:MayCaesar said:When you say that you "don't believe" in Big Bang, what exactly do you refer to? The specific claim that the Universe used to be much denser than it is now? The claim that it is expanding? The claim that it is not infinite? Or, perhaps, you believe that the entire physics framework used to arrive at the Big Bang Theory is wrong somehow?
As it is, your statement sounds similar to, "I don't believe in engineering", or "I don't believe in marriage". It is far too ambiguous to lead to a meaningful conversation without further clarification.
@MayCaesar
Maybe they even meant this:
I mean the sitcom. They may not believe in Sheldon Cooper lmao.
Let me do a Zeus and quote an AI on the subject:The Big Bang theory is a widely accepted scientific model explaining the origin and evolution of the universe. However, like any scientific theory, it is not without its limitations and areas of ongoing research and debate. Some of the key challenges and open questions associated with the Big Bang theory include:
Singularity Problem: The Big Bang theory describes the universe as originating from a singularity—a point of infinite density and temperature. However, the concept of a singularity is problematic because it suggests that our current laws of physics break down under such extreme conditions. Resolving this issue requires a theory of quantum gravity, which would unify quantum mechanics and general relativity.
Initial Conditions: The Big Bang theory does not explain what caused the initial singularity or what conditions prevailed before it. Understanding the initial conditions of the universe remains a major challenge in cosmology.
Horizon Problem: The universe appears to be uniform on large scales, with the same basic properties in all directions. However, regions of the universe that are now very distant from each other were never in causal contact (they couldn't have interacted or exchanged information due to the finite speed of light). This raises the question of how such uniformity arose without communication between these distant regions.
Flatness Problem: Observations indicate that the universe is very close to flat, meaning that parallel lines will never meet and the angles of a triangle add up to 180 degrees. The Big Bang theory suggests that the universe's curvature should evolve over time, but it remains remarkably close to flat. This fine-tuning of the universe's geometry requires explanation.
Dark Matter and Dark Energy: The Big Bang theory relies on the existence of dark matter and dark energy to explain various observations, such as the rotation curves of galaxies and the accelerated expansion of the universe. However, the nature of dark matter and dark energy remains mysterious, and their existence has not been directly confirmed through laboratory experiments.
Inflation: To address some of the issues mentioned above, cosmologists have proposed the theory of cosmic inflation, which suggests that the universe underwent a rapid exponential expansion in the early moments after the Big Bang. While inflation has been successful in explaining several cosmological observations, the details of how inflation occurred and what drove it are still not fully understood.
These challenges and unanswered questions drive ongoing research in cosmology and theoretical physics, with scientists continually seeking to refine and extend our understanding of the universe's origins and evolution.
It appears your AI is indeed more informed than you and @MayCaesar. Good to know.
Note: If anyone feels the need to verify the above for AI content (it appears that just_saying now thinks I use AI in almost all of my posts) using AI detection, check out one or more of the following tools (it's usually a good idea to use more than one in case the others miss something):
- I have only posted a satirical comment about the Big Bang Theory sitcom in this thread.
- What MayCaesar did was post genuine scientific inquiry—he nor I made any arguments about the Big Bang theory.
- I haven't used AI here for a while, and when I have, I have admitted it. I also do not use the format that just-saying has suggested. Juleskorngold does use that format quite often, though (perhaps he thinks we are twins). As for me, in most cases, it has taken some human effort to get the AI to do what I want it to do, as opposed to just asking a question and then posting the output.
- Just_saying also uses AI, by the way, but he will not admit it. He rewords some passages to evade detection and assumes no one will notice (perhaps he also believes he is the only one around here with this level of computer literacy). Moreover, after playing around with free and premium AI detectors (with deep scanning), I noticed that this can be detected at least among a few. But there is also, of course, a manual way to do this. It wouldn't be prudent to rely solely on automatic tools (AKA automation bias).
- Later, I will create a thread about how to detect AI content manually and a post in which everything I do will be my sole wording but designed deliberately to be detected as AI content by AI detectors. Hence, manual detection is probably also a good idea. PS: Humanizers are sh!t and a waste of money!
- Lastly, I mostly use AI for grammar and spelling checking, factual accuracy, logical validity, etc. But I don't just stop at AI; I also cross-reference with other sources depending on whether I want a formally casual or purely formal debate. If it's just casual, though, who cares?!
I have left it to these four because while there are loads more, these are the three I have found to be the most robust in my recent personal experimentation with them. The premium versions, of course, will offer the most in-depth scanning. But you get what you pay for!
Finally, even if someone has posted AI content, that is irrelevant to the validity of the content. Generally, dismissing or discrediting the validity of content predicated on its mere source is foolish.
I would agree with you that the cosmic microwave background fits best with the big bang model. However, several other cosmogenic models claim that it fits with their model also. For example a steady state model would claim that the CMB is there because the universe is eternal and the expanding of our region of the universe is because universes are always being created so there will be some areas where expansion is observed. Roger Penrose has a hybrid model that incorporates parts of the big bang model. There are several other models which appeal to the same evidence.xlJ_dolphin_473 said:The evidence for the Big Bang is all around us, in the form of the Cosmic Microwave Background. It is made of microwave radiation because the universe has expanded, stretching the wavelength. Billions of years ago, it would have been visible light, making it indisputable.
Furthermore, scientific measurements reveal that all galaxies are moving away from us. Is that because we are at the centre of the Universe? No - it's because the Universe is expanding. Galaxies that are further away are moving faster, confirming this theory. If you trace back this motion far enough in time, you reach a single point - the Big Bang.
Note that this is not incompatible with all forms of god - there could be a deistic god who does not interfere with the Universe, or used the Big Bang as a tool to achieve its aims. But to believe in young-earth creationism, you have to ignore all scientific evidence to the contrary.
And yet the powers of reason are there.Bogan said:"There is no firm reason to anticipate that the intellectual capacities of peoples geographically separated in their evolution should prove to have evolved identically. Our wanting to reserve equal powers of reason as some universal heritage of humanity will not be enough to make it so. " Nobel Laureate Professor James Watson, director of the Human Genome Project.