Responding to Intelligent Design/Creationism: The Law of Biogenesis
Posted by: RB on: March 2, 2008
This is the first entry of an ongoing program on this blog dedicated to responding to Intelligent Design/Creationist claims. Leading Intelligent Design/Creationism advocates accuse mainstream scientists of being dogmatically attached to naturalistic evolution, they describe evolution as being a faith rather than a scientific enterprise, they refer to those who accept evolution as “Darwinists”, so as to promote the fallacious notions that i) evolutionary biology is reducible to the ideas of Charles Darwin; ii) that mainstream scientists view Darwin and “Darwinism” as unquestionable and infallible; and iii) that Social Darwinist projects like eugenics practiced during the holocaust are somehow natural straight-forward outcomes of the acceptance of evolution. They also claim that evolutionary theory is replete with holes, and that mainstream scientists are simply ignoring or denying them. In this ongoing project, I will be reviewing arguments made by Intelligent Design Creationists and presenting rebuttals from the scientific community.
In considering the evolution-Creationism controversy, keep a few things in mind. Firstly, there is a controversy between evolution and ID/Creationism, but it is not a scientific controversy. ID/C is not scientific. It is entirely religious in nature. This is not simply the opinion of atheists or the scientific community. In addition to the scientific community having rejected ID/C as being either scientific or evidentially-informed (while also accepting evolution as both scientific and overwhelmingly supported by scientific research), a number of court decisions in the US (which were presided over by Christian judges; e.g., Judge John Jones in the 2005 Dover Intelligent Design trial) have come to the same verdict, as have numerous religious organizations, most notably the Catholic Church, and a number of prominent religious scientists, such as evangelical Christian Francis Collins, Director of the Human Genome Project.The primary source of information for this program is Talk Origins, an award-winning site dedicated to exploring the evolution-Creationism controversy run by scientists. Talk Origins has received strong endorsements from major scientific organizations such as the National Academy of Sciences, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and the Smithsonian Institute, major publications such as Science (arguably the world’s top scientific journal) and Scientific American, and is used as a source of course material for dozens of university courses in America.
The Law of Biogenesis
The Law of Biogenesis, attributed to Louis Pasteur, is often cited by Creationists as evidence for the need of an intelligent Creator, who they believe is their God. They describe the law of biogenesis as stating that life cannot come from non-life, it can only come from other life. This is a misunderstanding of the law. The law states that life forms such as mice, maggots, and bacteria cannot appear fully formed. The law says nothing, however, about the biogenesis of very primitive life from increasingly complex molecules.
Source: Talk Origins
34 Responses to "Responding to Intelligent Design/Creationism: The Law of Biogenesis"
March 3, 2008 at 9:21 am
Haha. TBM, as for what else they have to offer, I’ll be going through a long list of arguments in the coming weeks and months.
June 26, 2008 at 2:14 pm
I agree that evolution has the evidence to support it. And I am more than happy to believe that life began from non-life.
But I would put to you the following case for ID:
Suppose the USA was attacked by Country X, using some genetically modified virus.
We would expect our scientists to analyze the virus, and surely they would. And I expect that they would discover that the virus was, in fact, genetically modified — rather than naturally occurring.
What process would they use, if not some variant of ID, to make such a determination?
June 26, 2008 at 6:31 pm
Epin: In that case, surely they could investigate the virus with the assumption that there was a strong possibility the virus’ form was due in part to intelligent interveners – people. But this is different from ID in the God form. We have as good of evidence for there being other intelligent beings that we call fellow humans as we have for anything aside from our own individual awareness of ourselves. Further, we have similarly strong evidence that humans like ourselves intelligently design and tinker with things. We can look at blueprints, observe designers, and be designers ourselves. We do not have anything like this with respect to a God. Further, when we say that humans intelligently designed with virus X, the validity of the claim is not damaged by the subsequent question: who designed the human?
June 28, 2008 at 1:28 am
“Who designed the human?” is irrelevant to whether the virus was designed or not. We do not need to know anything at all about the designer of the virus to know that it was designed.
If that is true, then it is also true in the case of the cosmos. We do not need to know anything at all about the designer of the cosmos to know that the cosmos was designed.
The ‘Who designed the designer?” objection that Dawkins is so fond of is one big fat red herring.
June 28, 2008 at 6:35 am
Colin: I’m sorry, but it is absolutely stunning how misguided you are. The who designed the designer is an absolute slam on ID/C because it is not about the particular identity of the designer of the designer but about how an infinite regress is produced.
Who designed the human is irrelevant i the virus example not because we care about whether it was John Smith or Jennifer Schwartz, but because we have quite reasonable evidence to tentatively act in accordance with the notion that there are other people out there and some of them invent things and some of those things can be the result of tinkering with biological entities.
June 28, 2008 at 11:26 am
Mr Brown,
You state that “The law [of Biogenesis] says nothing, however, about the biogenesis of very primitive life from increasingly complex molecules.”
A huge problem with this statement, however, is that THE EXPERIMENTAL EVIDENCE ALSO “says NOTHING”/i.e. shows NO experimentally verified example of this EVER occurring. NO experimentally verified example AT ALL has EVER been scientifically observed/demonstrated/repeated, etc. of even ONE “most primitive living cell” being formed spontaneously from non-living matter. And true “science” does indeed require things like first-hand observation, repeatability, etc. eh? You have heard of the Scientific Method have you not?
My point is this: Your belief that “very primitive life [came] from increasingly complex molecules” is just that, a belief . . . a religious belief in fact . . . a religious belief not in any way qualitatively different from the religious belief of creationists. ALL the evidence we have observed supports the fact that the Law of Biogenesis is in fact N-E-V-E-R (naturalistically speaking) contradicted [that's why it has historically and of right deserves to be referred to as a "Law" of science]. And without all contradiction, the violation of a natural law requires a super-natural event — a miracle. I should clarify by saying that although the religious belief which evolutionists hold concerning first-life origins is not qualitatively different than the belief of creationists, it is, however, quantitatively different. It requires FAR MORE faith to believe what you evolutionists believe (more on that later).
But what do evolutionists believe? Ah, now that’s a good question. Tell me, why are evolutionists apparently so unwilling to cleary admit in public BOTH what they believe AND obvious problems with those beliefs. Apparently they want evolution (and themselves as evolutionists) to appear smarter and more intellectually unquestionable than it (they) really have a right to be. Apparently they are more afraid of the face-threatening predicament in which the blunt statement of truth would land them than they are truly concerned for sound science. Come on, how often has Richard Dawkins when speaking to the hoi polloi clearly stated this problem with evolution: “Hey folks, guess what? As we all know, the old notion of spontaneous generation was long ago discredited by Pasteur’s experiments which solidified what has historically been called The Law of Biogenesis as an inviolable natural law. This law, as you know, says that life only comes from life. We as scientists have NEVER experimentally observed this law to EVER be violated – NOT EVEN ONCE! And yet as evolutionsist we do believe that this incredible – or perhaps “miraculous” is a more accurate word – event did indeed take place. Yes indeed, we as evolutionists have no other choice but to believe — even though the law of biogenesis mitigates against such a possibility! — that somewhere down the line LIFE HAD TO COME FROM NONLIVING MATTER! The only other possibility is that some One created life and I (and all reasonable people, of course) clearly must reject such a notion because we, of course, don’t like the idea that there is someone over us who has the right to tell us what to do. . . . “.
The true “fact” of the matter is that no matter how eloquent and smart sounding Richard Dawkins is, he can cackle “fact, fact, fact, fact, fact” until he evolves into a chicken and this won’t cause to go away or be lessened in the least THE FACT that the evolutionary notion of first-life requires the violation of a never-observed-to-be-violated natural LAW of science! Evolutionists simply need to be honest and clearly acknowledge publically the astounding fact that . . . evolution does in fact require the violation of a NEVER-observed-to-be-contradicted law! Evolutionists must indeed BELIEVE by FAITH that such a naturalistically impossible event – which would be a MIRACLE – happened! Why won’t they clearly and publically say so? Why do they hide this fact and deceive by masquerading otherwise? I dare say it’s because they hate God more than they love true science and intellectual integrity. It is very interesting that men can apparently so hate someone who they claim to believe does not exist.
So that’s the what — the anti-science reality of evolutionary belief concerning first-life origins — and why brilliant men who in every OTHER way are true scientists believe it.
But (back from the digression) – seeing as both require faith in an event which is unobservable and unrepeatable – belief in evolution is qualitatively similar to the belief of creationists who hold to the biblical account. However, quantitatively evolutionary belief is on a far higher plateau. Their F-A-I-T-H in their MIRACLE-requiring theory is FAR GREATER than that which a creationist must exercise. For whereas creationists believe that this supernatural miracle of life-creation was accomplished by a powerful being, evolutionists believe that this supernatural miracle of life-creation was accomplished by . . . NO ONE AT ALL!
Oh, evolutionist, “Great if thy F-A-I-T-H”!!!
Since the THEORY of Evolution contradicts a LAW of science, it should have been laughed into oblivion from its inception. Nevertheless, like those who still advocate the Flat Earth Theory, evolutionary cultists seem zoned out to the fact that ALL the EXPERIMENTALLY VERIFIABLE evidence mitigates against the spontaneous generation of even the simplest cell which their creator-excluding theory requires! Incredible! Truth is indeed stranger than fiction! — evolutionists actually believe in a theory which requires a naturalistic impossibility to take place! … and they are taken seriously when they refer to such intellectual folly as if it were a fact! Incredible! And the mass of humanity – like a herd of crazed wildebeasts – oblivious to the irony and folly of it all are following along. The blind leading the blind! It’s true!! “Oh, Judgment, thou art fled to brutish beasts, and men have lost their reason.” !!! (Marc Antony in “Julius Caesar) http://www.americanrhetoric.com/MovieSpeeches/moviespeechjuliuscaesarantony.html
June 28, 2008 at 1:49 pm
In the virus example, we do not need to know the identity of the designer. We can see from the virus itself that it was designed. However, the fact that it was designed does tell us some things about the identity of the designer. It must have been intelligent, free, and sufficiently powerful. If the designer was not intelligent, then we would have no design; if it was not free, then there would be no culpability on the part of Country X; if it were not sufficiently powerful, there would, again, be no design.
Same for the cosmos. We see the hallmarks of design everywhere. Dawkins euphemistically calls it ‘the appearance of design’. From that fact, we can learn some things about the identity of the designer. The designer *must* be immaterial because it is the designer of matter. It must be extremely powerful to have caused the existence of the cosmos. It must be self-existent and non-contingent because an infinite regress is impossible.
An infinite regress is not necessarily produced by a designer. It is the absence of a non-contingent designer that leads to an infinite regress.
June 28, 2008 at 6:25 pm
One more comment for Mr. Brown,
Your primary means of argumentation above seems to be use of the logically bankrupt tactic known as as “bandwagoning”, i.e. “l must be right because, Look! all these people and groups agree with me!”
Whatever! That’s not science! You no doubt leaned such tactics from your higher-ups of of whom you were (in their eyes perhaps) their unsuspecting peon, and now you insult the intelligence of those under you by doing the same!
Skip this nonsense and give some actual facts if you have them! But START WITH a fact or an actual reasoned argument which answers the contention I just raised concerning the Law of Biogenesis! Give an EXAMPLE! give a FACT! to support your belief (which you as an evolutionist MUST hold!) that this law was and can be (naturalistically speaking) violated!
Who cares what the Catholic Church/the pope has said! Who cares what this dude or that dude or this judge or that judge said! Many churches and dudes have said otherwise too. And I could have based the majority of my argument on the naming of great scientists from the past and present who believe in creation. And that would be fine. But why start there!? You do (I believer) because you need to. I need not and did not do so. I did not use such a tactic – which apart from a foundation of verifiable fact based evidence is logically bankrupt as far as true scientific inquiry is concerned – to support what I said. Why don’t you do likewise and quit embarrasing yourself and insulting the intelligence of your readers!
June 29, 2008 at 9:53 am
The problem here is simple. Experiments are fully capable of showing that under the right circumstances, organic molecules that form the building blocks of life will emerge from a soup of lighter molecules. The problem is, the actual creation of life by this process takes a very long time, and finding grant money for a study that will take hundreds of thousands of years before yielding results is not really an option.
Even if it were possible for scientists to intervene and speed things up, such interference would necessarily destroy its usefulness as a proof of abiogenesis, since it would represent interference by a ‘designer’. Still, we have evidence that the basic processes required to create life to in fact occur.
Ultimately, the creationist position can be summed up as “The scientific position can not be proven absolutely, and seems kind of wierd to a completely uninformed layman, so based on that the only possibility is that my infinitely more wacky, totally ridiculous on every level, position must be true.”
The idea that the first scientific fumblings of primitives who explained thunder and sunlight by reference to super-powered invisible beings are somehow perfectly respectable answers in the modern age, while science, which due to its dependence on facts and observation, must always move slower than baseless speculation and bold ad hoc assertions must do the work of disproving these positions, is utterly ridiculous.
When you can show people actual evidence of god, then he becomes respectable. Right now, science has all the points on its side. It has produced all manner of ‘miracles’, from jet planes to microchips. Religion, on the other hand, has produced nothing of value, ever, despite having easily ten times as long as science to do so. Indeed, it is a massive net negative – it has held back science in numerous occasions (geocentricism, anyone?)
In every case where science has been rejected for conflicting with religion, science has proven correct, and religion has proven asinine. If that is not sufficient reason to reject religion in favor of science. I’m not really sure what could be.
June 29, 2008 at 11:53 am
“Experiments are fully capable of showing that under the right circumstances, organic molecules that form the building blocks of life will emerge from a soup of lighter molecules.”
I assume that you have examples…
In dismissing religion you neglect the fact that many of the fathers of modern scientific thought were Christians who believed that their Christian duty was to discover the truth about God’s creation.
Examples include:
Copernicus: “[It is my] loving duty to seek the truth in all things, in so far as God has granted that to human reason.”
Galileo, Bacon, Newton, Pascal, Kepler…
Nice try, though.
June 29, 2008 at 2:39 pm
Stoobs,
You think that it is some sort of argument that religion has not produced things like air travel and supercomputers, yet science has, so religion must be somehow deficient. What a stupid thing to say.
That is like calling modern dentistry deficient for not producing solutions to urban sprawl. It is not up to the dentists to solve problems related to urban sprawl.
Likewise, it is not up to theologians to design super-computers or jet planes.
Again, nice try.
June 29, 2008 at 7:25 pm
I’m not even bothering with Colin and most of the other people who come in with similar brands of dogmatism. It’s just pointless. From now on, every time a person who comes in who gives every indication of being an unnecessary frustration and waste of time, I’ll just spend the time I would’ve wasted responding to them in vane doing something productive. It’s like a self-contract, instead of the options being: 1. respond or 2. surf elsewhere, I’ll do something like meditate, read, clean my apartment, or even watch an enjoyable TV show if I’m on relax mode. Any of these things would be more productive, beneficial and/or enjoyable than having a pointless argument about whether or not this particular imaginary superhero (one out of thousands that have been believed in, and one of an infinity that could be believed in) is real with a person who is clearly incapable of applying reason and intellectual honesty to this intellectual acchiles heal of his.
June 30, 2008 at 9:23 am
The Miller-Urey experiment confirmed that amino-acids would form in the conditions of primitive Earth. That took me about 15 seconds to find. But then, I was looking, rather than closing my eyes to anything not written down 2000 years ago.
I don’t neglect the fact that early scientists were often christians, I simply don’t see it as relevant. They were christians because pretty much everyone was, because back then the church had the power to dispossess and murder anyone who wasn’t a christian. Under those circumstances, I’m sure I’d be claiming to be a christian too, and following up that claim by coming up with a christian sounding justification for whatever it is I wanted to do anyway. The fact that christians traditionally use the threat of murder to prevent anyone from expressing dissent from their beliefs makes it very difficult to support the claim that anyone was ACTUALLY a christian, rather than just going along to avoid being killed.
It’s like if Coca-cola were allowed to murder anyone who dissented from the position that Coke is the best beverage in the world. Sure, there would be a lot of coke drinkers out there, but that wouldn’t prove anything about either the taste of Coke. And when someone said “I am drinking other beverages in order to better understand the way the flavour of Coke, through its contrast with them,” the claim would have to be judged dubious in hindsight – more likely, they were lying about liking Coke in the first place, and had to come up with a justification for their desire to drink other things.
With regard to your second post, the goal of both science and religion is to explain the world. The way to evaluate such explanations is to look at how consistent and fruitful they are. Scientific explanations are internaly consistent and fruitful. Religious assertions are neither. Science gives us concrete results by which to evaluate its success in understanding the world. Religion gives us murder, mayhem, and torture whenever anyone disagrees.
June 30, 2008 at 8:58 pm
Hmm … Miller-Urey (which I have known about for years)…to be honest, I was hoping (for your sake) that you would have something a little more substantial than that. But it seems that you would rather embarrass yourself by bringing up an experiment that showed that a very few extremely simple amino acids (not even close to the complexity of RNA) could form under tightly controlled laboratory conditions and guided by external intelligence. Not only that, but the resulting amino acids had to be immediately removed from the system so that they wouldn’t break down like they would in the ‘wild’. Oh, and there is the inconvenient truth that the Miller-Urey ‘atmosphere’ was nothing like the primordial atmosphere. Add to that the fact that most of the amino acids formed were biologically useless and toxic to each other.
Granted, this experiment happened in the ‘50s so surely much has happened since then…oops…nope, we are in exactly the same spot, having faith that clay molecules will somehow have some innate capacity to self-organize.
Basically what has been shown is that life simply never comes from non-life. The only reason you guys accept this and put your faith in either clay or little green men is that you are not willing to consider anything that doesn’t fit your faith-based naturalistic worldview. If the evidence for anything else were this poor, it would have been abandoned long ago.
Naturalism is intellectually bankrupt and scientifically impossible as evidenced by Miller and Urey and the countless individuals who have tried to replicate or improve upon their experiment and failed just as completely.
As Robert Shapiro put it in Scientific American…
“The analogy that comes to mind is that of a golfer, who having played a golf ball through an 18-hole course, then assumed that the ball could also play itself around the course in his absence. He had demonstrated the possibility of the event; it was only necessary to presume that some combination of natural forces (earthquakes, winds, tornadoes and floods, for example) could produce the same result, given enough time. No physical law need be broken for spontaneous RNA formation to happen, but the chances against it are so immense, that the suggestion implies that the non-living world had an innate desire to generate RNA. The majority of origin-of-life scientists who still support the RNA-first theory either accept this concept (implicitly, if not explicitly) or feel that the immensely unfavorable odds were simply overcome by good luck.”
It is odd that you would quote an experiment that showed that intelligence is necessary for life to have begun. Even with the intelligence of our brightest minds, we still can’t coax life from non-life, just like the alchemists couldn’t coax gold from lead. Soon enough, evolutionists will be in the same category as the alchemists; a quirky footnote in the history of ‘science’.
June 30, 2008 at 9:46 pm
Hey Stupor Stoobs — wake up!!
Hey Brick Wall Brown — make a breach in that wall while there’s time! before the mortar sets and you are confirmed forever in your ignorance!!,
I’m back guys, and I just wasted my time reading your comments which were once again vacuous as far as real scence is concerned.
Stoobs writes, “The problem is, the actual creation of life by this process takes a very long”. Oh? and upon what basis does he make this statement of dogmatism? By f-a-i-t-h! He BELIEVES it to be so based on the anti-scientific prejudice of Fundamentalist Evolutionary Cultism. His statement of dogmatism here is not based on ANY sound science. Zilcho! Stoobs: “Oh, but I caaan’t have any science to back up this statement because it takes just so, so, long! You’re not being fair!” Stop. Enough drama. Suffice it to say that Stoobs has here identified his god – TIME. He believes by faith that TIME can perform miracles — even the super-natural act of doing an end run around the natural Law of Biogenesis.
Come on guys! Enough smoke and mirrors; how about some real, serious s-c-i-e-n-c-e? you know, the kind of science based on “observation” which Stoobs gave lip service to. Yea, how about it? let’s get “back” to science guys . . . not that Mr Brown ever actually began there.
But it was a good attempt at spueing forth a lot of high sounding nothing to confuse the uninformed. Of course, that’s the best you can do when you have nothing intelligent based on true science to say. That’s why neither of you gave any substantial science-based arguments to refute the Law of Biogenesis — which you must (make no mistake about it!) disprove to be a universal L-A-W in order to make room for the possibility of your naturalistic evolutionary theory! Stoobs statement that “the actual creation of life by this process takes a very long time” is just so much mythological conjecture which he sucked out of his thumb — but not science!
There really is no sound-science response to my comments. The Law of Biogenesis is just that – a L-A-W. And it is a Law which mittigates against and shows your theory to be the weenie theory that it is. Come on guys! are you really educated in the field of science or what?! Get real!
Suffice it to say that the amino acids of which Stoobs spoke are a far cry from even the “simplest” form of life of which we know. To jump from those amino acids to life is a breach of intellectual integrity of the highest order. It may fool some of your unsuspecting peon students, but hopefully you guys are smart enough to know better . . . unless you yourselves are those very unsuspecting peon students. I wonder. And if you are, I apologize for being so harsh with you. Perhaps you really don’t have the capacity yet to know better and are just parroting what your handlers have told you.
Here’s the facts kids: what you don’t know by true science (i.e observable experimentation) you really don’t k-n-o-w at all in a scientific sense – but rather accept because of your rabid and dogmatic adherence to the tenants of Fundamentalist Evolutionism. Fundamentalist Evolutionists believe what they believe because they CHOOSE to BELIEVE such things and WILL TO not change. Sorry guys, (if you are at that point) I can’t help you. “If any man [wills to] be ignorant, let him be ignorant”.
July 1, 2008 at 10:01 am
Time is critical to any naturalistic event. Apparently, your criteria for a demonstration of abiogenesis is that there can be no involvement by the experimenter in setting up the conditions of the experiment, and apparently that the effects have to be instantaneous, forming complex cells the moment the experiment begins. Well, by those standards, it’s unlikely to happen any time soon.
Actually, I need provide nothing with regard to the ‘law of biogenesis’, because it’s a ‘law’ that was made up, on no basis whatsoever. The very fact that life exists proves it forms, and the fact that theistic solutions are utterly idiotic is sufficient reason to discard them.
It’s possible that life demanded the involvement of aliens or some such naturalistic force to come into being on this world, but it MUST have originated sui generis, because there is no other way for it to have arrived.
The simple fact is, dualism (which is absolutely implicit in the idea of god existing) is such an idiotic position that frankly, even talking about the issue is giving you people more ground than you deserve.
Throughout history, there have been plenty of things that science hasn’t been able to prove. Then, later, it’s gone on to prove them. On the other hand, religion has yet to be right about anything, ever. It is a completely intellectually bankrupt position.
The simple, undeniable fact, is that life is just a bunch of chemicals. As such, it is obvious upon reasonable consideration that it can form from other chemicals. The only reason that this fact does not seem obvious to you is that you are clinging to the idiocy of dualism, assuming that life is comprised by something beyond matter. As soon as you can demonstrate that living matter is fundamentally different, on a sub-cellular level, than non-living matter – that it is more than simple chemicals – you will then at least have a starting point for an argument. Currently, you have nothing.
You seem to think that abiogenesis is the striking claim here, but it isn’t. We are claiming that chemicals, given time will tend to combine to form more complex chemicals, and that that will eventually produce the particular chemicals that created life. I point out in my defense that experiment has already confirmed the beginings of our hypothesis, but that a process that occured in nature over the course of billions of years can hardly be expected to go off instantly in a science lab over the course of an afternoon.
You are claiming that living matter is somehow different and special, and that it CAN NOT BE PRODUCED by nature unassisted. That is a vast, striking claim, that has no evidence whatsoever to support it. There are no unique chemicals in living matter, no special atom of lifeum which pops out of existence when the material becomes dead. There is nothing, in short, that could not occur by chance, given sufficient time. Occam’s razor demands that we discard it until you have something to support it.
Sure, I believe time can make things happen. Give me a second to flip a coin, and I may or may not get heads. Give me a year, and I’ll guarantee you I’ll get heads at least once. There’s no faith in this claim – just common sense.
I like how you folks seem aware that faith is an idiotic basis for science, and are perfectly happy to criticize it (even where it is not actually required) because it shows that unconsciously, you recognize the idiocy of your own faith, and that a part of you longs to change. Go, self actualize!
July 3, 2008 at 3:34 pm
Stoobs,
You claimed that life can emerge spontaneously, then you provided the Miller-Urey experiment as the only evidence. At which point I felt sorry for you because Miller-Urey shows that for anything useful to emerge, intelligence is required, and even then the results have been dismal.
Your spectacular claim remains unsupported.
Your rebuttal to that was to say that life must have emerged spontaneously because life exists…good thinkin’ there! (Were you drunk when you wrote this?)
Your posts are so full of straw men that it is tiresome to respond to them all…please check your ‘facts’ before you spout off.
Your coin flip analogy is so pathetic as to be laughable. We are not looking for a 50-50 chance of a one time event. If you must use coin flips, then we should expect that a pattern that is highly specific could emerge spontaneously. Perhaps if you were to flip a coin and have the first one as heads, the second tails, then 2 heads, 3 tails, 5 heads, 8 tails, 13 heads, 21 tails, 34 heads, and so on with the number of heads or tails in a row being equal to the next number in the Fibonacci sequence. If that were to happen up to F(6) or 8, I would be extraordinarily impressed with your luck. Anything beyond that and anyone would know that the sequence was intelligently manipulated.
As for faith being a poor basis for science…I stand by that claim. My science is based on other science, not on faith. Your science is based on faith in abiogenesis (you have zero evidence for it)and the creative power of natural selection acting on random mutations (again, no evidence that mutations are consistently beneficial and tautologically defined criteria for which animal is the fittest), and your a priori commitment to naturalism.
It is you who bases your science on faith, not I. The fact that you have to resort to invoking little green men from outer space should be embarrassing enough for you to abandon your ideas.
My science is based on science and my faith is confirmed by science.
July 4, 2008 at 10:47 am
“Scientist Battles Crazed Primates Remains Unfazed”
By Scientist I am, of course, referring to Collin — not myself . . . and certainly not the members of the Peanut Gallery.
Once again (because the obvious clearly hasn’t yet with certain individuals), here’s the facts (and, yes, these are facts AND super-significant facts AND facts that haven’t gone away or been mitigated in the least): In the absence of ANY credible supporting evidence AND in the face of ALL the evidence we do have being antaganistic, certain Clowns still insist that their theory is purely naturalistic and science based! That – if not disshonest – IS JUST PLAIN DUMB. Honestly guys, it’s like reasoning with a Brick Wall.
Collin has referred to Dawkins’ use of the logical fallacy called “Red Herring” to keep afloat his ship which as far as true science is conserned should have sunk long ago. Collin also referrenced your extensive use of the logically bankrupt “straw man” tactic. I echo his frustration with your reasoning skills. You guys utilize these and a host of other Logical Fallacies so frequently that it’s hard to find the time to point all of them out. It doesn’t take rocket science. Hopefully only the brain-endowed will read your comments and enjoy some comic relief. Take a class in logic . . . pleeease.
July 5, 2008 at 9:32 am
Collin: Ha! Ha! Watch out! – I think that other monkey’s about to throw a peanut.
Roger: You mean the one pretending to be too smart to enter into the fray?
Collin: Yea, … behind that Brick Wall … the one with the small head and the big mouth.
Roger: My theory is that he’s pretending to not be retarded and …
Collin: and he doesn’t want to open his mouth and blow his cover!
Roger: Exactly!
August 6, 2008 at 10:41 pm
“. . . When the boys came out to play, Georgy Porgy ran away.” (Mother Goose)
August 6, 2008 at 10:43 pm
“. . . When the boys came out to play, Georgy Porgy ran away.” (Mother Goose) 
October 8, 2008 at 2:45 pm
As a casual observer, this discussion resembles watching an NFL team (Collin) playing a junior high pee wee team (stoobs & zakariasen). Stoobs and crew not only refuses to answer questions raised by Collin (I’m guessing because they cannot) but they than go on to make absolute fools of themselves. Even I know the problems of the Miller experiment. Let me guess stoobs, the next thing you’re going to bring up is Haekles embryos as proof for your position.
Well done Collin, but I’m afraid it was not a fair fight. An individual with Intelligence against those lacking Intelligence. It looks to me like random unintelligent, naturalistic responses really don’t work in a debate against someone who has designed, purposeful intelligence on their side.
Nice try stoobs and crew, but you should probably stick with kids in the school system if you want to win debates like this.
October 9, 2008 at 5:16 pm
” The law says nothing, however, about the biogenesis of very primitive life from increasingly complex molecules”
Nobody says it does. The point that we Creationists try to make is that life doesn’t come from without life. No body says that the law of biogenesis rules out developing complex molecules. That is just a straw man.
November 17, 2008 at 12:44 pm
“To suppose that the eye, with all its inimitable contrivances for adjusting the focus to different distances, for admitting different amounts of light, and for the correction of spherical and chromatic aberration, could have been formed by natural selection, seems, I freely confess, absurd in the highest possible degree,” (Charles Darwin, Origin of Species).
November 18, 2008 at 9:58 am
Steve: I’m going to anticipate a subsequent point made by Darwin: when considering how evolution by natural selection works, even highly intricate functional assemblies come to enter the realm of plausibility. I should also mention that artificial life simulations which start with a representation of a light-sensitive patch of skin, over many generations in which similar selective pressures as those present in our environment are applied to this representation, after many generations evolve into representations extremely similar to our eyes in both appearance and function.
November 18, 2008 at 11:45 am
Mr. Brown, thank you for your reply!
I’m currently studying the theory of evolution and I am having a really hard time accepting the conclusion that it is not just a theory, but a law. Granted, I am just a lay person, but the examples I have seen offered as proof of evolution just don’t add up.
Take for example the The Peppered Moth. This example has been offered as proof of evolution, but I don’t see where the ‘evolve’ portion happened, or even the ‘mutation’ portion for that matter. Perhaps you can clarify where I have made incorrect assumptions. To my unscientific mind, this example merely shows a very clever pre-existing survival mechanism which neither shows adaptation or mutation.
1: The peppered moth in nature has a natural occurrence of both the light colored moths and the dark colored moths. This indicates that the genetics required to produce both light and dark varieties are already within the moth. No genetic mutation occurred, because the genes were already present for both light and dark. Some are hatched dark and some are hatched light. No mutation. No adaptation. No change in genetic makeup at all.
2: In the study, it was observed that when the environment in which the moths live became predominantly dark, the general population of moths also became dark. It was also observed that predators to the moth were feeding primarily on the light colored moth. This portion of the study certainly agrees with evolution in the natural selection part of evolution.
So, the moth story only shows a part of evolution as evolution is taught, which is genetic mutation + natural selection. In addition, there was no leap from a less complicated to a more complicated species, which is also a key component to evolution.
Consider the following: If the genetic makeup of the moth did not include both light and dark varieties, the moth would quickly become extinct. Predators would have readily consumed all the moths, but they didn’t. Why? Since some of the moths were hatched dark, when the environment turned dark, those dark moths were able to escape predation, and the species survived the environmental change. The light moths were consumed, and we are left with just the dark ones. Clean up the environment so it is not black any more, and the dark moths are now consumed while the light moths are not. The moths are still being hatched both light and dark during this whole scenario.
So, Mr Brown, how does the moth story serve as an example of evolution when only one component of evolution is present in the example?
I don’t want to speak about plausibility, or could have, or seems to, I want to speak about facts. The computer model may also seem to affirm the idea of evolution, but then again, I am a computer programmer and you only get out what you put in. Could you point me to the research that explains this computer model and the steps they took to ensure that both outcomes (extinction vs evolution and survival) were possible?
February 18, 2009 at 8:08 pm
Can you give me one example on science having observed the development of life out of non-living materials that was not accomplished in a specific controlled environment? That is to say, without the intelligent manipulations of circumstances to achieve it? The argument of ID as I understand it is that information must be added into the equation of matter + energy in order to equal life: M+E=L or M+E+I=L… In this case information would represent intelligence or intelligent manipulation.
February 19, 2009 at 3:14 pm
So you just delete my question? That’s how you prove your case?
February 19, 2009 at 3:15 pm
Doh! Sorry… there it is at the end. Still hope for an answer.
February 20, 2009 at 8:51 am
First off, thanks for the vote of confidence. You might want to wait more than 19 hours before assuming you’ve been censored by a rarely updated blog.
Second, no, I don’t know of any events of what you describe. Here is TalkOrigins account of this:
“Conditions today are different from conditions in the past in two important ways: First, there was little or no molecular oxygen in the atmosphere or oceans when life first appeared. Free oxygen is reactive and would likely have interfered with the formation of complex organic molecules. More importantly, there was no life around before life appeared. The life that is around today would scavenge and eat any complex molecules before they could turn into anything approaching new life.”
Next, what precisely does ID do for us intellectually? Absolutely nothing. All it is is “magic man dun it”. That’s it. Oh, look, I can’t conceive of how X could have happened, therefore some creative intelligence which I won’t even try to understand did it. This, just like theism itself – and Christianity in particular, which is what ID is all about anyhow – is intellectual childishness and irresponsibility in just about its purest form. When you don’t know the answer to something, the responsible thing to do is not say “magic man dun it”. It’s to say “I don’t know”. But when scientists create an incredibly evidence rich narrative, you should – to the degree that you’re interested in the subject matter – be willing to consider it honestly.
I’m not one of those people who thinks that science is going to give us all the answers. But when it comes to understanding things like origins, biology, physics, neurology, and so on, it’s the only game in town. 2,000 year old books that need the protection of “faith” and “religion” (i.e., belief without evidence and declarations of incivility for openly scrutinizing them) are not helpful at all. They may have motivated some scientists in that they wanted to “understand God’s creation”, but they afford nothing special at all in terms of predictions leading to scientific discovery. Furthermore, even in terms of motivation to learn they offer nothing special.
March 4, 2009 at 4:24 pm
Humans have 60,000 miles of blood vessels. If you think that happened by chance you might make a good philosopher but you would make a horrible engineer. Thank you.
April 5, 2009 at 4:59 pm
Bill Morgan,
I couldn’t agree with you more.
As I’ve sat and watched this discussion once again I see that it has degraded to belief and faith.
One side believes that Biogenesis had a helping hand, the other side believes in random chance.
One side has faith in God the other side faith in Time and accident.
The thing that I always find amazing is when The faith and Time bunch’s arguments stall, they always resort to name calling … well, your theory is preposterous and you are stupid for believing it, nah, nah, nah.
I’m sorry that I can’t offer you hard proof for the miracles that God has worked in my life and I’m sorry I can’t offer you some type of evidence that I feel his presence when I pray.
No Doubt, you will invoke all types of physiological stimuli that I confuse for God’s presence, and Random Chance helped me to avoid that car accident that would have killed me and my friends outright, or any of the other dozen examples I could cite.
But I would certainly agree with Mr. Morgan’s point, being an Mechanical Engineer by trade myself. If you really think all those parts just ended up where they are by accident, then please stick to the theoretical. You are not ready for reality.
June 17, 2009 at 11:22 am
Evolution was a theoretical science that has evolved into a modern day religion.
After 150 years, evolutionists have NOT provided basic answers:
1. Experimental data for how life began.
2. Experimental data showing one single case of an animal transforming into a different kind of animal (a fruit fly with legs on its head or a bacteria with a modified enzyme doesn’t qualify).
3. Experimental data showing how DNA came to obtain so much information and surround itself with meaningful machinery to use the information.
4. Experimental data disproving Pasteur at ANY level of life complexity.
“I don’t know how it happened, but it happened!” – Evolutionist
Please provide us this data or admit you use faith.
Dr. Crick who co-discovered DNA thought that aliens must have sent life here on unmanned spaceships! Magic aliens!
- Rob Miller, MD
March 2, 2008 at 11:37 pm
Isn’t there one basic creationist argument?
I, as a creationist, am limited in creativity, ignorant, or just poorly educated to the point where I can not conceive of a world without god, therefore god must exist.
What else does creationism / ID have to offer?