[_ Old Earth _] Louisiana Unanimously Passes Academic Freedom Bill

[freeway]

The origin of life is a separate issue,

its all in the same basket.. sorry.. can't have one without the other, your rules... thats like creation without God?

 

[jmm9683]

The origin of life is a separate issue altogether from evolution

. :-D wait :-D wait :-D no please wait :-D.... your killing me... :-D ... that was a good one......anyway back to the subject, its all in the same basket.. sorry.. can't have one without the other, your rules... thats like creation without God?

Evolution does not deal with how life began, at some point it did obviously because life is on the planet. How that happened, a magic man in the sky, abiogenesis, etc. makes no difference. Evolution deals with all that's after the obvious fact that life began at some point: allele frequency, speciation, mutation, etc.

 

[Deep Thought]

The origin of life is a separate issue altogether from evolution

. :-D wait :-D wait :-D no please wait :-D.... your killing me... :-D ... that was a good one......anyway back to the subject, its all in the same basket.. sorry.. can't have one without the other, your rules... thats like creation without God?

This is exactly the reason why non-creationists get so frustrated. It doesn't seem to matter how many times we tell creationists what evolution actually is, they either ignore it (deliberately or otherwise) or distort it.

I've asked the question many times as to why Creationists distort what evolution really is, and I never get a straight answer. I can only guess that it makes them feel vulnerable and afraid of the truth. That's certainly an understandable response. It does take a lot of courage to open ones eyes to reality.

 

[Barbarian]

I frequently point out that Darwin, in The Origin of Species made no claims about the origin of life, other than to say God did it.

And the response from creationists is often... "Wait. He can't say that! He's an atheist! He has to say how life began, or his theory won't work!"

It's some kind of logical blind spot in creationist thinking. I don't understand it, but there it is.

(Darwin, of course, was not an atheist. When he wrote his book, he was an orthodox Anglican Christian)

 

[Snidey]

It's one of many, many logical blind spots in creationist thinking. At some point you'd think they'd look around and say "hey, non of us are qualified to speak on this topic." One of the weird quirks of the Internet is that it allows stupid ideas to be isolated and flourish among the uninformed.

 

[freeway]

guys I apologize for the laughing... won't do it again, after all that is your belief, no matter how much I disagree... :

 

[freeway]

Cladistics
Ecological genetics
Evolutionary development
Human evolution
Molecular evolution
Phylogenetics
Population genetics
Biology Portal · v • d • e

In biology, evolution is the process of change in the inherited traits of a population of organisms from one generation to the next. The genes that are passed on to an organism's offspring produce the inherited traits that are the basis of evolution. Mutations in genes can produce new or altered traits in individuals, resulting in the appearance of heritable differences between organisms, but new traits also come from the transfer of genes between populations, as in migration, or between species, in horizontal gene transfer. In species that reproduce sexually, new combinations of genes are produced by genetic recombination, which can increase the variation in traits between organisms. Evolution occurs when these heritable differences become more common or rare in a population.

so just for sake of argument.. you say that evolution begins after the cell was created by God. and then this very first cell evolved and evolved until presto here we are.. Do you not see the enormous amount of faith and belief this system also needs. Now come on lets be honest. Life from non life and then the unsurmountable amount of variation is needed to pull this off.......

The Chicken or the Egg?

Any discussion of the origin of life would not be complete without a look at the greatest paradox of all: What came first, DNA or the proteins essential for the production of DNA?
Since the structure of DNA was deciphered in 1953, biologists have discovered that the process of duplicating DNA requires as many as twenty specific protein enzymes. These enzymes function to unwind, un-zip, copy, and rewind the DNA molecule. There are even enzymes that screen and correct for copying errors!
The instructions for the production of all proteins, including these enzymes, are in turn stored on the DNA molecule. So which came first: The DNA molecule or the proteins necessary to make DNA? You can't make DNA without highly specific proteins. But you can't make proteins unless you have a system in place to code for and build those proteins in the first place. And that means DNA.
Harold Blum recognized this catch 22 when he stated:
"...The riddle seems to be: How, when no life existed, did substances come into being which, today, are absolutely essential to living systems, yet which can only be formed by those systems?...A number of major properties are essential to living systems as we see them today, the origin of any of which from a 'random' system is difficult enough to conceive, let alone the simultaneous origin of all."51
Robert Shapiro also commented on this dilemma:
"Genes and enzymes are linked together in a living cell - two interlocked systems, each supporting the other. It is difficult to see how either could manage alone. Yet if we are to avoid invoking either a Creator or a very large improbability, we must accept that one occurred before the other in the origin of life. But which one was it? We are left with the ancient riddle: Which one came first, the chicken or the egg?"52
The simultaneous origin of DNA, RNA, and the proteins necessary to produce them is, according to Blum and Shapiro, very difficult to conceive. In fact, as we will see next, it is a mathematical impossibility.

 

[Catholic Crusader]

The origin of life is a separate issue altogether from evolution. Why is this so hard for creationists to understand? So is the theory of relativity invalid because it doesn't explain how energy and matter formed originally?

But the problem is that many, if not most, evolutionits teach evolution out of nothing, which DOES speak to the origin of life. I, and the pope, do think that certain elements of evoluition are valid. But evolution out of nothing? There is no more proof for thsat than there is for God. Less, in fact.

 

[freeway]

It's one of many, many logical blind spots in creationist thinking. At some point you'd think they'd look around and say "hey, non of us are qualified to speak on this topic." One of the weird quirks of the Internet is that it allows stupid ideas to be isolated and flourish among the uninformed.

holding tongue............................Right back at ya there, Einstein... :wink:

 

[Catholic Crusader]

It's one of many, many logical blind spots in creationist thinking. At some point you'd think they'd look around and say "hey, non of us are qualified to speak on this topic." One of the weird quirks of the Internet is that it allows stupid ideas to be isolated and flourish among the uninformed.

holding tongue............................Right back at ya there, Einstein... :wink:

You give too much credit. Even Eistein believed in a Supreme Being

 

[Deep Thought]

holding tongue............................Right back at ya there, Einstein... :wink:

You give too much credit. Even Eistein believed in a Supreme Being[/quote]

Not true. When Einstein talked about God, he wasn't using the term in a theist way and probably not even in a deistic way.

The following quotes from Einstein is enlightening:

The word God is for me nothing more than the expression and product of human weaknesses, the Bible a collection of honorable, but still primitive legends which are nevertheless pretty childish. No interpretation no matter how subtle can (for me) change this. These subtilized interpretations are highly manifold according to their nature and have almost nothing to do with the original text. For me the Jewish religion like all other religions is an incarnation of the most childish superstitions. And the Jewish people to whom I gladly belong and with whose mentality I have a deep affinity have no different quality for me than all other people. As far as my experience goes, they are also no better than other human groups, although they are protected from the worst cancers by a lack of power. Otherwise I cannot see anything "chosen" about them.

 

[Catholic Crusader]

Although never coming to belief in a personal God, Einstein recognized the impossibility of a non-created universe. The Encyclopedia Britannica says of him: "Firmly denying atheism, Einstein expressed a belief in "Spinoza's God who reveals himself in the harmony of what exists." This actually motivated his interest in science, as he once remarked to a young physicist: "I want to know how God created this world, I am not interested in this or that phenomenon, in the spectrum of this or that element. I want to know His thoughts, the rest are details." Einstein's famous epithet on the "uncertainty principle" was "God does not play dice" - and to him this was a real statement about a God in whom he believed. A famous saying of his was "Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind."

Einstein also said:

"In view of such harmony in the cosmos which I, with my limited human mind, am able to recognize, there are yet people who say there is no God. But what really makes me angry is that they quote me for the support of such views."

"I'm not an atheist and I don't think I can call myself a pantheist. We are in the position of a little child entering a huge library filled with books in many languages. The child knows someone must have written those books. It does not know how. It does not understand the languages in which they are written. The child dimly suspects a mysterious order in the arrangements of the books, but doesn't know what it is. That, it seems to me, is the attitude of even the most intelligent human being toward God."

 

[Deep Thought]

Regardless of Einstein's views, what difference does it make? It's just as pointless as arguing about Hilter's religious views.

 

[Catholic Crusader]

Regardless of Einstein's views, what difference does it make? It's just as pointless as arguing about Hilter's religious views.

Me thinks I heard someone cry "UNCLE"

 

[jmm9683]

[quote="Deep Thought":73a68]Regardless of Einstein's views, what difference does it make? It's just as pointless as arguing about Hilter's religious views.

Me thinks I heard someone cry "UNCLE"[/quote:73a68]

Einstein's views do no resemble that of atheists nor Christians so it's pointless.

 

[Catholic Crusader]

[quote="Deep Thought":bed4c]Regardless of Einstein's views, what difference does it make? It's just as pointless as arguing about Hilter's religious views.

Me thinks I heard someone cry "UNCLE"

Einstein's views do no resemble that of atheists nor Christians so it's pointless.[/quote:bed4c]
Oh contrare: It has an important point, and the point is the the greatest minds in the history of Western civilization have been men of faith - differents faiths to be sure, but still men of faith all the same. You who claim that creationsm is not scientific are at odds with the very scientists you wish to align yourselves with: Men such as Max Planck (best known for quantum theory), William Thomson Kelvin, who helped to lay the foundations of modern physics, and was also an Old Earth creationist - the list is endless.

The great scientists and doctors of history believed in God. Atheists can't come close to them

 

[John]

The great scientists and doctors of history believed in God. Atheists can't come close to them

Indeed.

Blaise Pascal
Sir Isaac Newton
Charles Babbage
James Joule
James Maxwell
Louis Pasteur
Werner Von Braun

And some more modern ones:

Dr. Russell Humphreys Ph.D. Physics
Dr. Danny Faulkner Ph.D. Astronomy
Dr. John Baumgardner Ph.D. Geophysics
Dr. Andrew Snelling Ph.D. Geology
Dr. Eric Norman Ph.D. Biochemistry
Dr. Donald DeYoung Ph.D. Physics
Dr. Raymond Damadian Inventor of the MRI
Dr. Jonathan Sarfati Ph.D. Physical Chemistry
Dr. A.E. Wilder-Smith Ph.D organic chemistry, Ph.D Biology

I could list thousands.

 

[jmm9683]

The great scientists and doctors of history believed in God. Atheists can't come close to them

Indeed.

Blaise Pascal
Sir Isaac Newton
Charles Babbage
James Joule
James Maxwell
Louis Pasteur
Werner Von Braun

And some more modern ones:

Dr. Russell Humphreys Ph.D. Physics
Dr. Danny Faulkner Ph.D. Astronomy
Dr. John Baumgardner Ph.D. Geophysics
Dr. Andrew Snelling Ph.D. Geology
Dr. Eric Norman Ph.D. Biochemistry
Dr. Donald DeYoung Ph.D. Physics
Dr. Raymond Damadian Inventor of the MRI
Dr. Jonathan Sarfati Ph.D. Physical Chemistry
Dr. A.E. Wilder-Smith Ph.D organic chemistry, Ph.D Biology

I could list thousands.

How many of the thousands of modern scientists that you can list are young earth creationists? My guess: very few.

 

[John]

Nope. many.

 

[Catholic Crusader]

How many of the thousands of modern scientists that you can list are young earth creationists? My guess: very few.

Well I don't know what you've heard, but "young earth creationists" are rare among Christians. They are only found usually among certain strident Fundamentalist or Evangelical sects, and constitute an extreme minority of Christians.