Any biologists out there?

[Shake]

After making a post on a YouTube video of a Hitchens-Craig debate in which I said that Craig didn't realize he alone owned the burden of proof, I stemmed a long discussion which I was sparingly involved until recently. A guy calling himself Bluemonsoon proved to be a worthy opponent and he even invited me to look at his more philosophical replies to another poster on a different video. In each comments section discussion went far and wide, but it turns out this guy is a Christian and an ID proponent. He's clearly up on his science, though I think he draws poor conclusions, but biology is far from my strong point, and he's also better versed in philosophy than I am, though I was able to pick out his presuppositional leanings. Anyway, he claims to have had "twelve semesters" of advanced biology and for the sake of his GPA, withheld his objections from his professors. I called him out for being dishonest and not caring enough about science to try to advance it by presenting his objections. The point here is that I was hoping someone more qualified than myself would take a look at this writing of his. In our discussion, he was pulling some of the usual tricks of ID/creationists: attacking weaknesses in Darwin's theory (neglecting all the progress we've made in the 150 years since then), as well as his use of the word "kinds" when attempting to brush of the observable phenomenon of speciation.

I did get a good chuckle early on in his piece when he equated Darwinian naturalism with, "mere theory elevated to an inviolable absolute of cosmological proportions." Seems highly ironic coming from a Christian.

In my latest reply, as part of my calling him uncaring for not raising his objections to his professors, I also compared him to Ray Comfort, who likes to go after people with only a meager understanding of the science, and attacking lay people on the internet. Again, as far as the biology goes, I'm out of my league against him, but I know a BS argument when I hear one.

 

[bigfield]

He presents a variation on the fine-tuning argument, itself a variant of the teleological argument, arguing that abiogenesis is impossible and the life-giving environment of Earth could not have come to exist without a creator.

You don't need to be a biologist to see that his conclusions, quoted here, are quite obviously a misrepresentation of the research conducted so far:

Combine all the concentrated mixtures you want. Sky’s the limit.


Goop.


Go with whatever conditions you want; feel free to variously alternate them at any time during the process.


Goop.


Go with whatever sources of energy you want; feel free to variously alternate them at any time during the process.


Goop.


Take all the time in the cosmos and multiply it millions of times.


Goop.


For there are no contingencies under which life could self-assemble.

The fundamental problems with his argument are philosophical:
1. Our inability to reproduce the mechanisms of abiogenesis means that we do not know how life came to exist on Earth. It does not follow that abiogenesis is impossible and that a creator is required.
2. The fine-tuning argument is a logical fallacy.

 

[James Brown]

"I don't know what's causing the noise in my attic.

Therefore, it can only be a ghost."

 

[fromderinside]

He presents a variation on the fine-tuning argument, itself a variant of the teleological argument, arguing that abiogenesis is impossible and the life-giving environment of Earth could not have come to exist without a creator.

You don't need to be a biologist to see that his conclusions, quoted here, are quite obviously a misrepresentation of the research conducted so far:

Combine all the concentrated mixtures you want. Sky’s the limit.


Goop.


Go with whatever conditions you want; feel free to variously alternate them at any time during the process.


Goop.


Go with whatever sources of energy you want; feel free to variously alternate them at any time during the process.


Goop.


Take all the time in the cosmos and multiply it millions of times.


Goop.


For there are no contingencies under which life could self-assemble.

*

The fundamental problems with his argument are philosophical:
1. Our inability to reproduce the mechanisms of abiogenesis means that we do not know how life came to exist on Earth. It does not follow that abiogenesis is impossible and that a creator is required.
2. The fine-tuning argument is a logical fallacy.

* Goop.

From  Lipid bilayer A few years later, Alec Bangham showed that bilayers, in the form of lipid vesicles, could also be formed simply by exposing a dried lipid sample to water.^[96] This was an important advance, since it demonstrated that lipid bilayers form spontaneously via self assembly and do not require a patterned support structure.

 

[Valjean]

This guy clearly has an axe to grind: Atheists are as obtuse as a pile of bricks? Their religion is abiogenesis and evolution? Scientists are 'fanatics of scientism'? Their conclusions guesswork? They ignore empirical data and dismiss the possible existence of anything that can't be quantified? -- And all this in the first paragraph, after which it seems to go downhill fast.

This guy apparently doesn't understand scientific goals or methodology, nor is he familiar with the research findings. He seems unaware of the purview of science.

 

[Peez]

I am a biologist, but that essay is so chock full of stupid that I don't see myself reading through the whole thing. Is there something in particular you would like me to look at?

Peez

 

[T.G.G. Moogly]

"I don't know what's causing the noise in my attic.

Therefore, it can only be a ghost."

And where did the ghost come from?

Don't let yourself be dragged into a deep discussion of biology and evolution when the entire point of the discussion is a claim that there is an invisible magic spaceman directing an orchestra and pulling all the right strings. Keep talking about the magic spaceman in every response and about how it is interested in all aspects of our lives and wants us to come live with it after we're dead.

Keep the discussion on point. His is a classic case of using science to disprove science.

 

[bigfield]

This chestnut:

f one allows that an intelligent agent was required to create the simplest form of life, one opens the door to a world where the regnant theory for the development of life might unravel. If an intelligent agent did it once, what would prevent him from creating other and even more complex forms of life again and again?

If you believe in God then you can convince yourself that any bullshit is possible.

 

[untermensche]

The Theory of Evolution is based on existing replicating organisms. It explains how changes occur and why there appears to be design.

It does not explain or claim to explain how the first replicating organisms came about.

Explaining biogenesis is trying to explain what happened billions of years ago to molecules. With almost no evidence.

Not as easy as explaining everything by saying "My god did it."

 

[Wiploc]

The fundamental problems with his argument are philosophical:
1. Our inability to reproduce the mechanisms of abiogenesis means that we do not know how life came to exist on Earth. It does not follow that abiogenesis is impossible and that a creator is required.
...

If our inability to reproduce abiogenisis means it didn't happen, then what is meant by the theists' inability to reproduce gods?

 

[T.G.G. Moogly]

This chestnut:

f one allows that an intelligent agent was required to create the simplest form of life, one opens the door to a world where the regnant theory for the development of life might unravel. If an intelligent agent did it once, what would prevent him from creating other and even more complex forms of life again and again?

If you believe in God then you can convince yourself that any bullshit is possible.

What do these intelligent agents look like and sound like? How big are they? Do they make noise? Where are they? How fast are they? How do they achieve locomotion? Do they give off smells? Do they wear clothes?

This classic intelligent agent today is called god. This god used to have lots of different names. Recently it became a creator, then an intelligent designer, and now it's an agent. I think in the bible it is even called "I am that am."

I think from now on I'm going to call it Mr. Creator, and define it as the most powerful ghost there is, kind of a king of all the ghosts. That makes sense because ghosts are rather loosely defined and can be anything for anyone, and make anything happen.

 

[James Brown]

Few nations have been so poor as to have but one god. Gods were made so easily, and the raw material cost so little, that generally the god market was fairly glutted and heaven crammed with these phantoms.

--Robert G. Ingersoll

 

[Shake]

I am a biologist, but that essay is so chock full of stupid that I don't see myself reading through the whole thing. Is there something in particular you would like me to look at?

Peez

Well, he attacks the Miller-Urey experiments, and I know we've learned a lot since then. In this way, I feel his attack is akin to that of when other creationists go after evolution by attacking some of Darwin's ideas about evolution, when we've had over 150 years since then to correct his errors and add to evolutionary theory. I've read recently about an article from a physicist who argued that given the conditions on the early earth life may have actually been inevitable. What is your take on abiogenesis?

 

[untermensche]

Few nations have been so poor as to have but one god. Gods were made so easily, and the raw material cost so little, that generally the god market was fairly glutted and heaven crammed with these phantoms.

--Robert G. Ingersoll

What happened was the ultimate god was invented.

The solitary god that longs for the admiration of apes.

 

[Peez]

Shake:
Well, he attacks the Miller-Urey experiments, and I know we've learned a lot since then. In this way, I feel his attack is akin to that of when other creationists go after evolution by attacking some of Darwin's ideas about evolution, when we've had over 150 years since then to correct his errors and add to evolutionary theory. I've read recently about an article from a physicist who argued that given the conditions on the early earth life may have actually been inevitable. What is your take on abiogenesis?

Agreed, he is going with the standard creationist playbook here. The TalkOrigins Index to Creationist Claims covers a number of these issues:

CA602. Evolution is atheistic.

CB035. Miller's experiments had an invalid assumption of the type of atmosphere.

CB050. Abiogenesis is speculative without evidence.

CB090. Evolution is baseless without a theory of abiogenesis.

Obviously abiogenesis is no more a “holy grail” of atheism than is gravity. We have good evidence that there was no life here five billion years ago and that there was life here three billion years ago, so life started at some point. Certain theists would like to just throw up their hands as say ‘we don’t know how that happened, so it must have been God’. If we had adopted that attitude we would never have discovered electricity, genetics, atoms... much of anything, really. It is worth noting that creationists think that there was abiogenesis, they just think that it was magic. We don’t know how gravity works, and we don’t know how life got started, but we know that gravity works and we know that life got started, and science does not address magic.

We will likely never know exactly how life actually started, there are just too many variables and the process occurred just too long ago. However, we can test hypotheses about how it could have happened, and perhaps come to broad conclusions on abiogenesis.

The “Miller-Urey experiments” have not been “falsified” (it is a bit strange to claim that an experiment can be “falsified”). I would guess that the author meant to claim that the results of these experiments have been discredited. This is, of course, false, but certainly one has to understand the limitations of these experiments. Basically, the Miller-Urey experiments demonstrated that under certain chemical conditions complex organic molecules (including amino acids) could be generated outside of living systems. Such molecules are seen as necessary precursors to simple life forms. These experiments were not meant to show that all required organic molecules could be produced under those specified chemical conditions, rather they simply showed that at least some could. This was an important step in abiogenesis research, but not the last word by any means.

The chemical conditions used were based on hypotheses about the early Earth’s atmosphere. However, some evidence suggests that the early Earth’s atmosphere may have been different from that on which the “Miller-Urey experiments” were based. How does this change our interpretation of the results? First, those results still show that in principle complex organic molecules could be generated outside of living systems. Second, even if the atmosphere was different from what they had used, there is no reason to assume that the entire planet did not have any places with conditions similar to those on which the “Miller-Urey experiments” were based (e.g., near volcanoes, see The Miller Volcanic Spark Discharge Experiment). Third, subsequent experiments have generated complex organic molecules under chemical conditions that mimic what we now think the ealy Earth atmosphere was like (e.g., A Reassessment of Prebiotic Organic Synthesis in Neutral Planetary Atmospheres). Of course research has shown that nucleic acids can also be generated outside of living systems, e.g., Synthesis of activated pyrimidine ribonucleotides in prebiotically plausible conditions. On top of all that, there are other possible sources of complex organic molecules, such as meteors (e.g., Meteorites Reveal Another Way to Make Life's Components).

I hope that this is helpful.

Peez

 

[bilby]

We can make almost any vaguely plausible assumptions about the conditions available for abiogenesis on the early Earth, using what little we do know about geological and atmospheric conditions, and all we are doing is setting the 'plausibility dial' - the probability that life might arise in a given set of conditions could vary from 'almost certain' to 'highly unlikely', and all of those probabilities are good enough - if life developing was a one in a million shot in any given billion year period, then we would expect about a one in 220,000 chance that life would develop on Earth - and the galaxy contains WAY more than 220,000 Earth-like planets, so it was bound to happen somewhere. And of course, survivorship bias means that only on those planets where it occurred is there any life around to wonder how it happened.

The ONLY probability of life developing that would rule out naturally occurring abiogenesis on Earth would be zero.

If it was somehow to be proven that life cannot develop without an intelligent input, then we would have to discard natural abiogenesis as an hypothesis. But note that this rules out such things as panspermia, or other ideas wherein life on Earth was caused by an intelligent life that arose by natural means elsewhere. If aliens messed with the prebiotic earth to cause it to bring forth life, then we need to find a mechanism whereby those aliens arose from natural causes too.

Then and only then, with the probability of naturally occurring life set at zero, would we be forced to consider that either life is eternal, and has always existed; or that life was created by a non-living intelligence. You could call either God if you wanted to, but neither really fits the common descriptions of Gods - what people mean by God in this context is 'something that is alive and intelligent but not part of nature' - which makes no sense at all. If a god or gods exist and are interacting with nature, then they are part of nature by definition, and their actions can be observed and studied. If they are not interacting with nature, then they are indistinguishable from non-existent.

The whole idea that the question 'how did life arise' needs to be asked, comes from the error of dualism - the incorrect idea that 'life' is somehow more than just complex chemistry. When understood as complex quasi-cyclic chemistry that self-catalyzes and tends to produce imperfect copies of itself, life becomes something that really doesn't require any particular or unique 'explanation'; Chemistry happens, and if it falls across some (ill-defined - see below) threshold of complexity in a given environment, then we can call it 'life'.

IMO, it is probably more important, and certainly more interesting, to ask "Why do we have ninety one stable chemical elements*, rather than just one or two?" than it is to ask "Given that there are ninety one stable elements in such and such mixture(s) with such and such energy gradients, how did some of them assemble into complex quasi-cyclic chemistry that self-catalyzes and tends to produce imperfect copies of itself?". But you almost never hear religious people declaring that the stability of nucleii lighter than Plutonium (or heavier than Helium-4) can only be explained by God.

People divide reality into arbitrary classes 'life' and 'not life', and then say "Hey, I'm part of 'life', so it must be really important!", but they don't seem to notice that their classes are poorly defined - I still have never seen a really good definition of life (one that can neatly place everything in the real world into one box or the other, with no overlap or left-over bits that don't fit).

At least the astrophysicists division of the chemical elements into three classes (Hydrogen, Helium, and Metals) is a dependable set of categories into which all atoms can be correctly fitted. 'Life' vs 'non-life' isn't even a properly defined thing; why people get so hung up on how to go from one class to the other, when the edges are so woolly, is beyond me.









*And what the hell is up with Technetium??

 

[T.G.G. Moogly]

I think it's called binary thinking, where the only perceived choices are the extremes, nothing in between. Religion is the best example of this. It's a very simple way to think, ironically because it doesn't require much thought at all, if any.

 

[Shake]

Revisiting this thread to collect some data as I found this guy again trying to bully people in yet another YT comments section (on this video, see replies of someone named 'Buzz'). I'd also asked questions about his philosophy at the Secular Cafe when it was open, and fortunately I was able to find the answers there I was looking for, but it seems another commenter has seen through his BS. This time he posted his real name and gave us a link to his YT page, where I see he follows such channels as Living Waters, Inspiring Philosophy, Ravi Zacharias International Ministry, and one called Bible Answer Man. I believe I called him out before on being a presuppositionalist, and it seems he's just some guy who likes to throw around intellectual-sounding language in such a way as to scare off those who perhaps haven't studied things as well in an attempt to hide his logical fallacies and shortcomings. I borrowed some quotes from you all here just to give him something to chew on.

 

[steve_bank]

There are theories. Alls you need is a basic combination of chemicals and energy. You can look at Brownian Motion. Creationists argue LOT precludes abiogenesis.

Black smokers, undersea volcanic vents, are a soup of chemicals and heat. There are organisms that live on chemical energy.


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miller–Urey_experiment

he Miller–Urey experiment[1] (or Miller experiment)[2] was a chemical experiment that simulated the conditions thought at the time to be present on the early Earth, and tested the chemical origin of life under those conditions. The experiment supported Alexander Oparin's and J. B. S. Haldane's hypothesis that putative conditions on the primitive Earth favoured chemical reactions that synthesized more complex organic compounds from simpler inorganic precursors. Considered to be the classic experiment investigating abiogenesis, it was conducted in 1952[3] by Stanley Miller, with assistance from Harold Urey, at the University of Chicago and later the University of California, San Diego and published the following year.[4][5][6]

After Miller's death in 2007, scientists examining sealed vials preserved from the original experiments were able to show that there were actually well over 20 different amino acids produced in Miller's original experiments. That is considerably more than what Miller originally reported, and more than the 20 that naturally occur in life.[7] More recent evidence suggests that Earth's original atmosphere might have had a composition different from the gas used in the Miller experiment. But prebiotic experiments continue to produce racemic mixtures of simple to complex compounds under varying conditions.[8]

 

[steve_bank]

I apply the Sherlock Holmes approach. Eliminate the unlikely and whatever is left is the likely answer.

We exist. There are a limited number of options. We winked into existence out of nothing for no reason. A deity winked us into existence. We came about as the result of natural processes.

All in favor of natural processes raise your hands.