by ExBethelitenowPIMA 92 Replies latest watchtower beliefs
the complexity coming over billions of years argument can’t apply to the simplest cell.
Why not?
Did you read my post above about endosymbiosis? Did you think about it or do any further reading? Do you want actual answers?
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yes I want answers, the simplest cell is still incredibly complex. Let’s start with this how could the simplest cell have come about by chance?
Please note the word ‘simplest’
meaning there could not have been an even more simple cell before hand
so the question is how did the simplest cell come about to start with?
I did read all the posts but forgive me it requires so much mental gymnastics and sounds baffling. The truth should be simple.
but there has to be something that never had a beginning or else what was before that?
The idea that there was always something can be applied to the universe. Matter and energy could have always existed. While both options seem impossible, it strikes me as less likely that something as incalculably complex as God would always exist instead of matter and energy. If you feel that the simplest and clearest explanation is the better one, I don't see how you would prefer a God always existing versus the basic components of a universe.
And if a God can conjure up a universe out of nothing, then it is possible for something to exist from nothing, which seems to contradict your belief regarding the possibility of a universe coming into existence. In other words, either option works with or without a God. That cannot be used to disqualify one or the other.
Scientific evidence is intellectually challenging. Chemistry and biology takes effort to understand. I made the effort to read the books that explain the basics to non; experts. It's astonishingly fascinating.
Theology and ID is not just simple it is simplistic and vacuous.
I gave you a starter about how the first simple cells began in alkaline vents and more complex cells arose as independent organisms that merged through endosymbiosis.
Nick Lane describes the process is detail in Life Arising. Do you want truth and evidence or a comfortable story?
Make an effort it's more than worthwhile.
At the moment there still is no overwhelming evidence of the theory of evolution.
With respect, the basic building blocks of the theory, like genetic drift and speciation are very easy to illustrate.
If you can accept that the cheetah (Acinonyx jubatus) is not fertile with any other member of family Felidae, than you have accepted the concept of genetic drift. Species drift apart over time until full reproductive isolation eventually occurs.
If you can accept that the golden barrel cactus (Echinocactus grusonii) sprang from a chance hybridization in Central Mexico, than you have accepted the concept of speciation. In plants, hybridization can and does produce new species that are reproductively isolated from the parent species.
The origin(s) of life itself is not evolution. As Cofty pointed out, it is a related subject, called abiogenesis.
ExBethelitenowPIMA, you are confusing (or deliberately misconstruing) the simplest cell which currently exists on Earth with the simplest cell which had existed on Earth billions of years ago. Just as many species of animals and plants have gone exist, so have many species of prokaryote organisms (including the most simplest type of living cell which had existed on Earth) gone extinct.
It is true that the all of the currently existing species of prokaryote organisms on Earth are very complex compared to all nonliving entities on Earth, but the first single celled organism to ever have existed on Earth would have been much simpler than any of today's prokaryote organisms. The simplest cell which ever existed on Earth was far simpler than the currently existing simplest cell on Earth.
Note that my post on the first page of this topic thread very carefully used the following wording. "Furthermore, the first biological cell to come into existence must have been much less complex the the simplest cell which currently exists on Earth. The cells which exist today (even the simplest) have evolved (partly by natural selection) over hundreds of millions of years from an ancestor cell.
[Note: In my first post of this topic thread where I wrote "... less complex the the simplest cell ..." I meant to write "... less complex than the simplest cell ...".]
TD, though the origin of life is not biological evolution, it is what a number of scientists call a part of chemical evolution. There is also what is called cosmological evolution.
I do like the complexity argument. The most detailed image of a cell to date using rendered data from radiography, nuclear magnetic resonance and cryoelectron microscopy. As the video brings out, in Darwin's time they had limited knowledge of the cell. It is possible to reconstruct aminoacids in a lab, but not possible to make twenty aminoacids and then to connect and fold them into proteins. For that one needs instructions as from the DNA in the nucleus. The instructions are transported by m-RNA to the ribosomes where these are implemented. This is an information and manufacturing system, equal to none. For that you need a designer, architect and engineer to put it all together. A simple explanation for a very complex phenomenon.
If I didn’t know for a fact that the proximate cause is intelligent design, my only guess would be an infinite descriptive universe and things did not happen by chance but by an inherent descriptive drive of the universe. I don’t believe that a random number generator with billons of digits would roll the same dice billions and billions of times —which is what cofty is saying— resulting in non existence with one bad roll of the dice. Horsefeathers! and birdbrains.
Disillusioned
Since brevity is the soul of wit, I shall be brief:
Many years ago, lunch was served at the JW assemblies aka conventions, and it was very cheap and delicious and fun.But when the government in the US passed laws taxing the sale of food at the assemblies, the food was served anyway and people instead of paying, could contribute money for the food they got or hopefully should realize that food is not free. But the people, that is to say the JW, didn’t catch the drift. They were not contributing money for the food that was being served to them at the conventions. And this went on for a few years. One day at one circuit assembly, a co or some other delegate gave this discourse. This is what he said:
Once upon a time a very long time ago in a country very far away there lived a king. And one day, the king summoned all of his wise men and put a burden upon them. He asked them, I want you guys to bring to me the wisdom of the world. So they set out to accomplish their task. They came back some years later and said: Hear oh king, we have found the wisdom of the world and they hand over to the king a library of books the size like the encyclopedia britanica of years ago. The king started to read it but was too much information for him to digest so he calls back all of his wise men and instructs them, “ Look, I am never going to read all of this. It is too much to read. Consolidate it please.” So the wise men head out once again and in about a year they come to the king and tell the king: “ Oh king, We have the wisdom of the world here in this one book. The book was about the size of one Insight book of the WT. So once again the king opens the book and flips through the pages and then tells his wise men: “ You know what, it’s too much for me to read!! Can you consolidate it some more please!! So the wise men huddle around in a circle and in less that a minute they tell the king: The wisdom of the world is: THERE IS NO FREE LUNCH.
A few minutes later at the close of the morning session, they made the announcement that the brethren would have to bring their own food from now on for simplification reasons. —The end of an era.
