Posts by cofty

62

Evolution - A Conversation with Alex Williams

by cofty in

alex - thank you for your offer to have a conversation about evolution.. i accept the scientific evidence that all life - including humans - evolved from a common ancestor through unguided evolution over millions of years.

this isn't even a controversial position in the scientific community.. the evidence rests on the data from many interconnected fields including paleontology, comparative anatomy, geology and especially genetics.

it is no exaggeration to say that the evidence for your own non-human ancestry is contained in every cell in your body.. it is my experience that jws are generally quite ignorant (not in a pejorative sense) of the scientific case.

cofty

Alex - Are we still having a conversation about evolution?

62

Evolution - A Conversation with Alex Williams

by cofty in

alex - thank you for your offer to have a conversation about evolution.. i accept the scientific evidence that all life - including humans - evolved from a common ancestor through unguided evolution over millions of years.

this isn't even a controversial position in the scientific community.. the evidence rests on the data from many interconnected fields including paleontology, comparative anatomy, geology and especially genetics.

it is no exaggeration to say that the evidence for your own non-human ancestry is contained in every cell in your body.. it is my experience that jws are generally quite ignorant (not in a pejorative sense) of the scientific case.

cofty

Evolution has no use for 'guidance' which amounts to nothing less unscientific than creationism. It is unfalsifiable and therefore unscientific by definition.

Could you provide a quote regarding Simon Conway Morris' thoughts on the topic please?

62

Evolution - A Conversation with Alex Williams

by cofty in

alex - thank you for your offer to have a conversation about evolution.. i accept the scientific evidence that all life - including humans - evolved from a common ancestor through unguided evolution over millions of years.

this isn't even a controversial position in the scientific community.. the evidence rests on the data from many interconnected fields including paleontology, comparative anatomy, geology and especially genetics.

it is no exaggeration to say that the evidence for your own non-human ancestry is contained in every cell in your body.. it is my experience that jws are generally quite ignorant (not in a pejorative sense) of the scientific case.

cofty

Thank you Lee.

It looks like my interlocutor has left the building?

Conflating abiogenesis and evolution is not just a JW practice, it's a tactic favoured by creationists everywhere. Evolution is beyond reasonable doubt; abiogenesis is still a subject of many hypotheses. Once abiogenesis is settled all creationists will want to talk about is the origin of the universe.

Alex if you are still here can we resume our conversation? I would like to talk to you about some specific evidence for evolution and to find out what you already understand about the subject.

62

Evolution - A Conversation with Alex Williams

by cofty in

alex - thank you for your offer to have a conversation about evolution.. i accept the scientific evidence that all life - including humans - evolved from a common ancestor through unguided evolution over millions of years.

this isn't even a controversial position in the scientific community.. the evidence rests on the data from many interconnected fields including paleontology, comparative anatomy, geology and especially genetics.

it is no exaggeration to say that the evidence for your own non-human ancestry is contained in every cell in your body.. it is my experience that jws are generally quite ignorant (not in a pejorative sense) of the scientific case.

cofty

Thank you Doug will do.

62

Evolution - A Conversation with Alex Williams

by cofty in

alex - thank you for your offer to have a conversation about evolution.. i accept the scientific evidence that all life - including humans - evolved from a common ancestor through unguided evolution over millions of years.

this isn't even a controversial position in the scientific community.. the evidence rests on the data from many interconnected fields including paleontology, comparative anatomy, geology and especially genetics.

it is no exaggeration to say that the evidence for your own non-human ancestry is contained in every cell in your body.. it is my experience that jws are generally quite ignorant (not in a pejorative sense) of the scientific case.

cofty

Thank you for the context of Shapiro's quote Doug, that is a fascinating article.

Nick Lane describes a 'metabolism first' scenario in The Vital Question.

If you have any other examples of misleading references in Origins of Life I would love to see them too.

62

Evolution - A Conversation with Alex Williams

by cofty in

alex - thank you for your offer to have a conversation about evolution.. i accept the scientific evidence that all life - including humans - evolved from a common ancestor through unguided evolution over millions of years.

this isn't even a controversial position in the scientific community.. the evidence rests on the data from many interconnected fields including paleontology, comparative anatomy, geology and especially genetics.

it is no exaggeration to say that the evidence for your own non-human ancestry is contained in every cell in your body.. it is my experience that jws are generally quite ignorant (not in a pejorative sense) of the scientific case.

cofty

Contrast and compare -

What about protein molecules? They can be made from as few as 50 or as many as several thousand amino acids bound together in a highly specific order. - Alex

This is incorrect. Your source ignores the fact of redundancy... There are a billion times more possible arrangements of amino acids that will result in a completely functioning (cytochrome C) protein than there are atoms in the universe. - Cofty

If we are going to have a conversation we need to not talk past each other.

62

Evolution - A Conversation with Alex Williams

by cofty in

alex - thank you for your offer to have a conversation about evolution.. i accept the scientific evidence that all life - including humans - evolved from a common ancestor through unguided evolution over millions of years.

this isn't even a controversial position in the scientific community.. the evidence rests on the data from many interconnected fields including paleontology, comparative anatomy, geology and especially genetics.

it is no exaggeration to say that the evidence for your own non-human ancestry is contained in every cell in your body.. it is my experience that jws are generally quite ignorant (not in a pejorative sense) of the scientific case.

cofty

Alex - The answer to your previous post is that the idea of life arising in an 'organic soup' is many decades out of date.

The big problem with that approach is where the energy comes from to sustain biological processes. The most promising progress in origin of life research is being made in the field of bioenergetics by scientists like Nick Lane and his colleagues at UCL. For more information see The Vital Question by Nick Lane

Geochemistry likely became biochemistry in deep-sea alkaline vents. The specific details of how that occurred gets over the many seemingly impossible challenges of the outdated 'organic soup' model.

The question of the chiral nature of life was solved many years ago by a Japanese scientist by the name of Soai. The solution rests in the autocatalytic reactions that leads to rapidly increasing amounts of the same enantiomer of the product. I could explain that in more detail but I'm not sure you are all that interested in the science.

The subject of abiogenesis is still an open question. The history of life's millions of species is not. Evolution is a fact.

Did you notice my comments in my previous post about cytochrome C and how it supports common ancestry? You seem to have ignored it. Shall we go into that in a bit more detail?

When we agreed to a conversation about evolution I made two reasonable requests. Firstly that we stick to evolution and not conflate that with abiogenesis, and secondly that we avoid copy-paste.

Not going so well on either of those so far.

62

Evolution - A Conversation with Alex Williams

by cofty in

alex - thank you for your offer to have a conversation about evolution.. i accept the scientific evidence that all life - including humans - evolved from a common ancestor through unguided evolution over millions of years.

this isn't even a controversial position in the scientific community.. the evidence rests on the data from many interconnected fields including paleontology, comparative anatomy, geology and especially genetics.

it is no exaggeration to say that the evidence for your own non-human ancestry is contained in every cell in your body.. it is my experience that jws are generally quite ignorant (not in a pejorative sense) of the scientific case.

cofty

What about protein molecules? They can be made from as few as 50 or as many as several thousand amino acids bound together in a highly specific order.

Just for the record (not to go too far off-topic) but this is incorrect. Your source ignores the fact of redundancy.

Take just one example, a protein molecule that is involved in respiration called Cytochrome C. There are a billion times more possible arrangements of amino acids that will result in a completely functioning protein than there are atoms in the universe.

When scientists examine the actual amino acid sequences of Cytochrome C in living things they find that the degree of differences across species precisely mirrors the relationship predicted by evolution. When they examine the underlying nucleotide sequences the pattern of common ancestry becomes even more apparent.

62

Evolution - A Conversation with Alex Williams

by cofty in

alex - thank you for your offer to have a conversation about evolution.. i accept the scientific evidence that all life - including humans - evolved from a common ancestor through unguided evolution over millions of years.

this isn't even a controversial position in the scientific community.. the evidence rests on the data from many interconnected fields including paleontology, comparative anatomy, geology and especially genetics.

it is no exaggeration to say that the evidence for your own non-human ancestry is contained in every cell in your body.. it is my experience that jws are generally quite ignorant (not in a pejorative sense) of the scientific case.

cofty

Hi Alex - Thank you for your reply but you are off-topic right from the start.

The origins of amino acids and protein molecules is NOT part of the field of evolution. It is abiogenesis and as you will see in my OP I asked that we stick to the topic of evolution in this thread. JWS always confuse the two which is why I stipulated that.

Evolution is about how the many millions of species that have ever lived all originated from a common ancestor.

I am happy to start yet another thread about abiogenesis and share a lot of the latest evidence with you on that but I think it would be better to focus on one thing at a time.

Over to you to start again.

40

How did Adam and Eve survive when kicked out of the Garden of Eden?

by I believe in overlapping in

it’s funny how a simple question like this is something that the dubs never even consider.

my dad asked this question to a couple of witnesses and they wondered for a minute and said; .

“i never thought about it, i’ll have to ask the elders”.

cofty

Thank you Alex, I have started a new thread here...

one bible Scholar put it this was its like placing the letters of the alphabet in a hat and on the first and only chance picking every letter from A to Z in secession ,thats the odds of evolution

Actually evolution is nothing like that at all. Natural selection acts like a chance accumulator but we can get into that in detail in the new thread.