evolution question

by outsmartthesystem 165 Replies latest watchtower beliefs

• 

  bohm

  MM: Try Coynes book, "why evolution is true".
• 

  glenster

  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mortimer_J._Adler#God

  Alternative to the Adler thoughts--fideism
  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fideism
• 

  Qcmbr

  Knowsnothing - do you remember that famous christian peanut butter fallacy that said every so often we should open peanut butter and find new life?

  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FZFG5PKw504

  I used to think this rather a silly idea since even if new life could , on rare occassions spontaneously begin in a jar of peanut butter - it would still need to be checked in a lab since abiogenesis doesn't start with bacteria in can theoretically be started with simple RNA type material which will self-replicate. So for all we know 1 out of every billion jars of peanut butter does spontaneously form self replicating RNA but not only do we not look for it we then eat the stuff so destroying our new life. The only thing we can safey say is that we haven't found a practical way to put together conditions for basic replicating nano machines in a lab using simple inputs. Life may be spontaneously starting all the time (in geological timeframes) only to 'die' immediately in the face of more successful life. Our experiments are very, very limited.
• 

  NewChapter

  Knowsnothing--I just wanted to add a little something. Belief in evolution, does not preclude a belief in a god. Evolution only challenges the literal Genesis account of creation. It really doesn't look into the question of God's existence. I'm just addiing this because literalists sometimes push the idea that if you believe in a god, you must believe the creation account. I think this can be an obstacle for those that want to honestly look into science.

  You already have picked up on the difficulty with your questions about spontaneous generation of life. For some, only a god can answer such. For humans, it has proven unanswerable so far. Evolution focuses on speciation and natural selection.

  I personally don't believe in a god, but that doesn't mean everyone else is like me. You don't have to feel like you'd be giving up all spirituality if you were to accept science. Christians on this board mostly believe in evolution. For them the evidence is undeniable, but evidence for a god is also undeniable to them, so they conclude that Genesis is not literal and evolution was the process their god used.

  I just wanted to point out that there are many more choices than Atheist or Creationist.

  NC
• 

  Knowsnothing

  Qcmbr, I never meant to make it as simplistic as that. The only thing I meant(again sorry if I wasn't that specific, intially) to ask/argue is,

  1.) if we know it happened in the past (true, under very specific circumstances we have yet to identify), do we have evidence it happened more than once, in more than one place?

  2.) given the info we have now on early earth's atmosphere's and terrestial's chemical make-up, can we really conclude life came about by abiogenesis? Do we have a sound theory such a favorable environment/events actually existed, as opposed to our merely wanting to believe such an environment existed?

  Don't clump me in with the peanut butter fallacy. Such a thing didn't not cross my mind. I meant, for example in a certain region where could potentially exist the necessary elements to spontaneously at least generate self-replicating RNA, which isn't even considered life. If we can't even get that out of nature...... do you understand the implications?
• 

  Giordano

  Conversations like this always lead me to the internet and like climbing a tree one can follow many paths to arrive at the top. Though I believe there's more pleasure in the discovery then getting to the top and or finding the definitive answer.

  I remember as a young witness being counseled that I should not speculate. Unfortunately that line of reasoning interferes with ...........reasoning.

  Here are a few speculations that interested me.

  It turns out that roughly 70% of the Universe is made up of dark energy. 25% is made up of Dark matter. The rest - everything on Earth, everything you can see in the universe ie normal matter - adds up to less than 5% of the Universe. The universe is not empty it is filled with dark energy and matter. Comets' and Black holes. You want motion and energy and life look up your surrounded by it http://science.nasa.gov/astrophysics/focus-areas/what-is-dark-energy/ .

  Which led me to this " Astronomers today believe that a large fraction of the atoms in our bodies were once inside stars that became supernovae, and that they were "launched'' into the universe when these stars exploded. Furthermore, we believe the explosions of supernovae have flooded the Galaxy with high-energy radiation that probably contributed to the radiation background that produces mutation and drives the evolution of life on Earth. Also, in recent years, we have found intriguing evidence that the formation of our own solar system may well have been triggered by a nearby supernova more than five billion years ago."

  I also learned that 50 trillion electron neutrinos from the sun are passing through the human body every second!

  No conclusions yet, no need for any but the possibilities for how life, our species developed, is intriguing.
• 

  gubberningbody

  Bohm, I'd love to see how information is generated via natural selection and mutation, however I haven't found any literature which shows how this is possible.

  Let me explain my understanding.

  Let's say we don't believe in any Lamarkian system of aquired characteristics or morphogenetic fields...

  This means that natural selection is differential reproduction, which is nothing more than a competition as to who can produce the most offspring and keep that going over time.

  Natural selection acts as a sifting mechanism. It doesn't generate novelty, it acts with veto authority. It says yea or nay, nothing more.

  This leaves mutation as the only novelty generating mechanism.

  This is suggested to have no teleological end, no purpose and no purposer behind its operation.

  What is the rate of mutation?

  What mutagens are available?

  No matter this we can by way of illustration use a sentence like:

  "The cat chased the rat."

  This is an organism which, natural selection will act upon. The rules are that in order for this organism to be selected it must have an advantage in the differential reproductive realm as a result of the mutation aquired, or this mutation should at least be benign as regards differential reproduction. That is the sifting mechanism.

  Now let's say by way of illustration that the for any sentence, to be viable, it must make semantic sense and gramattical sense, otherwise it is a dead, nonreproducing sentence.

  Now let's "mutate" this sentence and see how much novelty we can generate.

  "The cat chased the bat"

  "The bat chased the bat"

  "The bat chased the rat"

  "The bat chased the hat"

  "The cat chased the hat"

  "The rat chased the hat"

  "The rat chases heat"

  You can permute and mutate the sentence, but it must operate within certain bounds, and aquisition on new information is quite difficult.

  Now ask yourself about mutation rates and see if current rates of mutation would lend themselves to the rates required to go from the 3,000 nucleotides for say virus x0174 (BTW with 5,386 nucleotides)

  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phi_X_174

  You can see over 3,000,000,000 nucleotides in the human genome, so the idea that mutation and natural selection acting as a sieve is simply insufficient to the task assigned to it.

  You can't generate more information in a random process, and yet here we are, obviously more complex but without an adequate explanation for the insertion of all this additional information.
• 

  Knowsnothing

  @Newchapter, I am aware of the possibilites, frames of minds, what have you, that exist out there (deist, theist, agnostic, atheist, and any variations of these, along with a few more obscure ones like pan-deists and pan-theists)

  To me, and this might be owed to my upbringing, but also to where my mind naturally leads me with evidence thus far, is that it couldn't have happened at random. For get about "purpose for human life", etc., the mere intricacies you have to deal with in order to get life to function.....

  I sometimes would like for God to be Bible God, but after examining the Bible critically, that doesn't hold up to well. At least I would know he interacts with us, or did so as some point. That's the comforting portion of it.

  For now, the only thing that points me to God is our mere existence. I understand that's not enough for everyone, and even I myself like to ask, "well, where are ya, God? What the heck r ya doing? Where have you been all this time?".

  Its like this, the evidence for abiogenesis is inconclusive, and IMO, inconceivable, so I reach the conclusion that for life to form, someone, something had to set it in motion. Otherwise, its just logistically impossible. That's not to say I don't have trouble reconciling God, his supposed morality, or things like. It's just that so far, everything points to intervention (at some point), whether I like it or not.

  I would very much like to be an atheist, but it honestly doesn't convince me. It doesn't mean I don't see your points either. Trust me, I'm on the fence about it myself.
• 

  Qcmbr

  Sorry Knowsnothing I wasn't implying that you were in the peanut butter brigade :) i just wanted to say that it may be possible that the building blocks of life are regularly getting put together in the form of a self replicating machine but that self replicating machine is merely wiped out by advanced replicating machines such as bacteria.

  I did read a New Scientist article that seemed to have some promise for cell development. If memory serves it was showing how a clay bubble can become stable enough for chemistry to occur including the all important energy gradient (caused by diferences in the salinity inside the bubble and inside.) The clay bubble in question was very stable and is a hypothetical precursor to an actual cell wall, within the clay bubble there is a measure of protection from external forces and a medium to transfer chemicals (the clay bubble wall.)

  The argument may not be so much about when abiogeness occured but what we actually agree is life. Is self replication life (so crystals would be a form of life)? Or does it require some other factor as well? That nature produces self replicating machines is true but only the rna/dna self replicating machine has progressed beyond a mere pattern.

  Once you have a self replicating machine with the ability to make mistakes - and the chemistry supports the replication of those 'mistakes' - , a sufficient supply of raw materials and energy you will get complex life appearing given the final factor - time. A really interesting experiment would be to take a fabrication plant for robots, provide automatic new plans for robots based upon the preceding plans but with a small randomising element and a set of selection pressures and then see what you get. It may one day even build itself a consciousness.
• 

  gubberningbody

  Qcmbr - and yet you'd still be supplying the needed information, afterwhich you'd have variations on the theme, but no additional information content - this because you started out with plans in advance.

  http://www.randommutation.com/index.php

  Check out this link.

  Let me know how long it takes before you get a viable new sentence.