Young Earth Creationism Vs. Science (Statler Waldorf Contd)

[Lethe]

The ATP Pump is constructed using the energy from, you guessed it, other ATP Pumps. So you can apply all the raw energy you like to the system, it's not going to do any good without these mechanisms already in place, but you can't get these mechanisms in place without these mechanisms in place.

The study of abiogenesis is in it's infancy compared to that of evolution; however, it's currently hypothesisized pyrophosphite played a key role in the development of the first life forms.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/201...094906.htm

Though no, there is yet no definitive explanation.

Like I said, raw energy only increases entropy, so the "well it's an open system" argument doesn't work.

Earth is an open system. An open system refers to an exchange of matter and energy. If it were not an open system processes such as photosynthesis, which you mentioned above, could not take place.

On a side note, it's kind of funny you reference South Park considering its creators (Parker and Stone) in their own words "F***ing hate Atheists" lol.

They're not the sharpest knives in the drawer, but that doesn't mean they can't be amusing. There's actually an interview of Parker explaining what he thought atheism was. It's hilarious:

http://abcnews.go.com/Nightline/Entertai...197&page=2

"Out of all the ridiculous religion stories -- which are greatly, wonderfully ridiculous -- the silliest one I've ever heard is, 'Yeah, there's this big, giant universe and it's expanding and it's all going to collapse on itself and we're all just here, just 'cuz. Just 'cuz. That to me, is the most ridiculous explanation ever."

Never mind the fact that atheism is no more a religion than theism (though I'm sure you'll disagree), and only a closed universe collapses, the "just 'cuz" translates to complete and utter ignorance of science, which in all honesty isn't too surprising. But I haven't watch the show for it's intellect, only it's occasional humor bits. Tangent though.

[Justtristo]

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Why do you continue to believe that the universe is only 6000 years old, which flies in the face of insurmountable scientific evidence in a huge range of disciplines that say this is a false hypothesis.

Huge range of disciplines huh? I hope you are not making the mistake of mixing up operational science with origins science, sounds like you are though. The universe doesn't come with an "I am xxxxx years old" tag, so of course the evidence requires interpretation. So is there a serious issue you want addressed or are you just "preaching" with loaded questions?

Astronomy, cosmology, physical chemistry, materials science, botany, immunology, morphology, Pharmacology, genetics, biochemistry, geology, paleontology, archeology ,anthropology, history and linguistics.

Is that not a huge range of disciplines?.

Besides in order for me to believe that the earth is 6000 years old, I would have to seriously question the interpretation of evidence that scientists use to determine the age of the earth and the universe.

[chatpilot]

Never mind the age of the Earth, there are plenty of civilizations that are known to be older than 7,000 years old. To believe that the Earth is about 7,000 years old is a ridiculous notion.

[Captain Scarlet]

Furthermore, every time I provide evidence against Naturalistic Evolution, I am providing evidence for supernatural creation.

No. You provide what you consider evidence against Evolution through Natural Selection and it is successfully refuted. So far, that is all I've seen. If one of your points of 'Evidence', were not successfully refuted, then the 'evidence' you provided would only indicate that the theory of evolution may be wrong. It would be just plain stupid to leap directly to the conclusion that the bible is true and god is love, Praise Jayzus!!

Absolutley Paul. That Statler statement was a bifurcation.

Statler if you want to prove creation, then it would be a good idea to find evidence. Disproving evolution (which you have failed to do, but if you did would be an incredible breakthrough in science), does not lend credence to supernatural creation, and further to that Yahweh etc. You cannot assume that if A is wrong, B must be right especially when there are almost infinite range of possible answers.

Good luck with proving supernatural creation. For thousands of years man has tried and failed, despite being very motivated to prove their god/s. Once you have done that then try proving it was Yahweh and not Lord Brahma.

[Statler Waldorf]

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The study of abiogenesis is in it's infancy compared to that of evolution; however, it's currently hypothesisized pyrophosphite played a key role in the development of the first life forms.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/201...094906.htm

Though no, there is yet no definitive explanation.

Earth is an open system. An open system refers to an exchange of matter and energy. If it were not an open system processes such as photosynthesis, which you mentioned above, could not take place.

Never mind the fact that atheism is no more a religion than theism (though I'm sure you'll disagree), and only a closed universe collapses, the "just 'cuz" translates to complete and utter ignorance of science, which in all honesty isn't too surprising. But I haven't watch the show for it's intellect, only it's occasional humor bits. Tangent though.

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Abiogenesis is impossible; the P Values are so ridiculous that they would just be rounded to zero in any other field of Science. But because Secular Scientists are rooting so hard for a naturalistic explanation for life they will accept it no matter how improbable. Could you imagine if some Scientist said, “Hey I figured the chances of there being a God is the same as guessing a 5000 digit pin number on your first try (the chances of Abiogenesis happening), we should totally believe in God now!”? He’d be laughed at, but when Scientists say they believe in Abiogenesis, even though the odds of it happening are the same as guessing a 5000 digit pin number on your first try, they get published in Journals. It’s absurd.

As to the open system thing, I am well aware the Earth is an open system, but energy is only necessary for life, it is not sufficient. So the fact that the Earth is an open system really is not sufficient to get life. As I point out (and as you did when you mentioned photosynthesis), there has to be a mechanism already in place to convert the sun’s energy to a form that can be used by the organism. These mechanisms are built using the energy converted by the same mechanisms in other cells. It’s just like saying, “Well if I let a bull out in a china shop we can expect new china to be produced because the shop is now an open system.” No, you would only expect all of your existing china to be destroyed. Now if you tied the bull up and had him turn the crank on a potter’s wheel you could start making new pottery. Until this mechanism is in place, the raw energy from the bull only breaks things down.

Atheism is actually classified as a religion using the “Seven Degrees of Religion” which are used in archeology. However, that is probably a topic for a different thread.

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[quote='Statler Waldorf' pid='109163' dateline='1291921874']

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Astronomy, cosmology, physical chemistry, materials science, botany, immunology, morphology, Pharmacology, genetics, biochemistry, geology, paleontology, archeology ,anthropology, history and linguistics.

Is that not a huge range of disciplines?.

Besides in order for me to believe that the earth is 6000 years old, I would have to seriously question the interpretation of evidence that scientists use to determine the age of the earth and the universe.

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There are Young Earth Scientists who work in every one of those disciplines, and scientific fact and Truth are not based on consensus as I am sure you know. So I guess I don’t really see your point.

Never mind the age of the Earth, there are plenty of civilizations that are known to be older than 7,000 years old. To believe that the Earth is about 7,000 years old is a ridiculous notion.

In Historical Science you never say you "know" anything for sure. It's all based on circumstantial evidence that requires interpretation. This interpretation is made using a framework. The framework that is used to interpret those older dates assumes no global flood occurred. When a global flood is taken into account, the evidence actually puts no civilizations prior to 6000 years.

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Absolutley Paul. That Statler statement was a bifurcation.

Statler if you want to prove creation, then it would be a good idea to find evidence. Disproving evolution (which you have failed to do, but if you did would be an incredible breakthrough in science), does not lend credence to supernatural creation, and further to that Yahweh etc. You cannot assume that if A is wrong, B must be right especially when there are almost infinite range of possible answers.

Good luck with proving supernatural creation. For thousands of years man has tried and failed, despite being very motivated to prove their god/s. Once you have done that then try proving it was Yahweh and not Lord Brahma.

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Brush up on your logic. In a two possibility model, evidence against one possible answer is evidence for the other option. It’s called disjunctive reasoning and it is completely valid. Guys on your side of the aisle (i.e. Darwin and Dawkins) have admitted that the two options are either naturalistic means or supernatural creation. Darwin had no concrete evidence for his theory; he just tried to use evidence against Creation to support it. The fact that his theory still has no concrete evidence and life arising from a single common ancestor who also arose from non-living matter is impossible is evidence confirming supernatural creation. Once you get to the point where you admit supernatural creation occurred, we can then talk as to why it has to be the God of the Bible. Let’s get to step one before we start talking about step 6 or 7 shall we?

Ok, so I promised Darkest Angel and Sam that I would talk about Mitochondrial Eve and Information Theory, so here they are.

MITOCHONDRIAL EVE:

We can make assumptions about when Mitochondrial Eve lived by using mitochondrial clock rates that assume Evolution occurred, or we can actually observe how fast this molecular clock ticks and extrapolate it back to when Eve lived. When we assume Evolution occurred, we assume that mutations occur every 600 generations, which puts Eve at about 200,000-250,000 years ago. However when this rate is actually empirically measured, we find that mutations actually occur around ever 40 generations. According to the article in Science this would make Eve only 6000 years old. Or course this lines up perfectly with the Biblical Account of Creation, so this method is thrown out even though it is based on observation, and the other method is accepted even though it is not based on observation.

Sources
“Mitochondrial Eve: the plot thickens.” From Trends in Ecology and Evolution, 12
“Calibrating the Mitochondrial Clock" from Science 279
“A high observed substitution rate in the human mitochondrial DNA control region” from Nature Genetics Vol. 15
INFORMATION THEORY

Ok, Sam. I didn’t get much to work with because I don’t have all the articles you referenced. However, I did notice that the articles you referred me to were dealing with an increase in genetic or chemical material, but you referred to this as an increase in information. The two terms are not synonymous. Information is a tough thing to define but an easy thing to recognize. The actual definition for information is a bit technical but a short definition that is often used and works most of the time is, “Specified Complexity”.
I think the best way to recognize information and put a general quantity on it is to think of books. Each book contains information; the information is not contained within the actual ink or letters on the page, but rather their specificity. I can take the words in a book and convert them into Morse code (or brail) so a blind person could understand them. I did not change the amount of information present because its specificity did not change. However, I did change the manner in which the information is transmitted. I could also buy a second copy of my favorite book but also not increase the total amount of information present even though I doubled the amount of letters present. It is for this reason that examples of Gene Duplication or even adding new Chemical pairs to genes are not examples of increased information. Now if you could find a mutation that altered an amino acid sequence that actually caused the sequence to fold into a different protein and this protein then helped the organism survive we’d be moving in the right direction. However, this has never been observed to happen once, much less the majority of the time and millions and millions of times like Evolutionary Theory would require. So all the examples of supposed Darwinian Evolution are no different than claiming, “This ball can make it to the top of that mountain on its own! Watch!”, and then proceeding to roll the ball down the hill. Most people would not accept that claim based upon the lack of observed evidence to support it, just like the majority of Americans do not accept Evolution because of the lack of observed evidence to support it.

For more information (pun intended) on the subject I’d encourage you to read the following peer-reviewed article by Dr. Werner Gitt who is one of the World’s leading experts on Information Theory.
[url] http://creation.com/information-science-and-biology[/url]

[LastPoet]

[orogenicman]

Brush up on your logic. In a two possibility model, evidence against one possible answer is evidence for the other option.

Logical fallacies:
1) Slippery slope. The consequence does not necessarily follow from the premise.
2) Either or argument.

Scientific theories stand or fall on their own merit. You seem to think that all one has to do is refute evolution and creationism will somehow be seen as the logical alternative. Such is NEVER the case using the scientific method. Creationism must be seen as providing a better explanation than evolution. And when we look at the scientific data compiled over the last 150 years, we see that there simply is no merit whasoever in supposing that creationism explains anything, much less replaces evolution as a valid scientific argument.

[theVOID]

It's a false dichotomy grounded in incredulity

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Abiogenesis is impossible; the P Values are so ridiculous that they would just be rounded to zero in any other field of Science.

Gravity is rounded to zero in most equations in QM... Does gravity not exist?

Also, a low P is not a zero P. Take any group of 100,000 stars, their positions relative to each other out of every possible set of relative positions is near zero, does that mean that 100,000 stars cannot be in an arbitrary configuration? Of course not, so you cannot claim that Abiogenesiss is false because a low probability event is near zero, it's plainly illogical.

It works out as:

If P ~>0.n then ~p

That is false, it is only true 'If P =0 then ~p'

Any non zero value does not necessitate that ~p.

But because Secular Scientists are rooting so hard for a naturalistic explanation for life they will accept it no matter how improbable.

You want to argue against the existence of improbable events? Go ahead, amuse us with your stupidity.

Could you imagine if some Scientist said, “Hey I figured the chances of there being a God is the same as guessing a 5000 digit pin number on your first try (the chances of Abiogenesis happening), we should totally believe in God now!”?

False analogy, the example is only valid if they are stating that "because the chances of god happening is as low as guessing a 5000 digit pin number in one go he therefore necessarily does not exist".

Just like Abiogenesis, if the chances of that P >0 then it is not necessarily true that ~P. This also does not rule out evidence coming to light that changes the constraints. Again with the star analogy, the chances of any 100,000 stars being in configuration x relative to each other is near zero. If the configuration x has a grouping of 5 values (154,325,164,976,352) and we determine that these 5 values exist in a set of relative positions of 100,00 stars then the probability of that configuration being real have just become more likely.

Finding evidence for parts of the abiogenesis set does the same thing. Finding amino acids forming in predicted early-earth conditions increases the probability, having self-replicating RNA massively increases the probability, finding hundreds of extremophiles increases the probability etc, the more evidence we find corresponding to the Abiogenesis set the more likely it becomes that the set is 'true'.

He’d be laughed at, but when Scientists say they believe in Abiogenesis, even though the odds of it happening are the same as guessing a 5000 digit pin number on your first try, they get published in Journals. It’s absurd.

You want to find me a single published paper on Abiogenesis that has such a pithy backbone? You won't, because like always you creationists are required to resort to straw-man caricaturisations.

As to the open system thing, I am well aware the Earth is an open system, but energy is only necessary for life, it is not sufficient. So the fact that the Earth is an open system really is not sufficient to get life.

Of course not, if all that was necessary was an open system then everything from a dust cloud to an asteroid would be sufficient. The point of earth being an open system is nothing more than a refutation of the creationist claim that "The second law disproves evolution".

As I point out (and as you did when you mentioned photosynthesis), there has to be a mechanism already in place to convert the sun’s energy to a form that can be used by the organism.

Any phoyosensitive system gathers solar energy and converts it to energy necessarily. Photosynthesis is an example of an nth generation photo-type structure that evolved from simple photosensitive structures.

Skin burns are an example of photo sensitivity, so is a rock blackening in the sun.

These mechanisms are built using the energy converted by the same mechanisms in other cells.

That is false. Photosynthesis deals with turning carbon into organic compounds and is powered by solar energy, you can have (and there are literally millions of examples) of photo sensitive cells (and inorganic) that convert solar energy by some mechanism.

You really need bio 101 if you have such a piss-poor understanding of photosynthesis.

This argument is even on AiG's "don't use these arguments because they're debunked to fuckedy" list.

It’s just like saying, “Well if I let a bull out in a china shop we can expect new china to be produced because the shop is now an open system.” No, you would only expect all of your existing china to be destroyed. Now if you tied the bull up and had him turn the crank on a potter’s wheel you could start making new pottery. Until this mechanism is in place, the raw energy from the bull only breaks things down.

Not only is the argument your analogy is based on a false premise, but you couldn't even manage to find a valid analogy. Lucky for you we can already see what you were getting at (because like I've mentioned it's debunked) else you'd be nearly totally incomprehensible.

Atheism is actually classified as a religion using the “Seven Degrees of Religion” which are used in archeology. However, that is probably a topic for a different thread.

Atheism is less than a single position, it is a statement about belief. In this case from the latin "A Theos" which means literally "without belief in god". That isn't even a position on the existence of God (disbelief vs lack of belief)... Some religion.

I love that shit-stained brush you're using in this argument. It's like the "you're just as bat-shit as me" argument, which is not only misplaced in this circumstance, but it's also fucked because of the intended support for a position that necessarily cannot arise. It is like "you're just as unsupported as me therefore i'm right (or not wrong)" The reality is that this argument has absolutely no impact on the validity of the position being espoused.

[Captain Scarlet]

Brush up on your logic. In a two possibility model, evidence against one possible answer is evidence for the other option.

Logical fallacies:
1) Slippery slope. The consequence does not necessarily follow from the premise.
2) Either or argument.
Scientific theories stand or fall on their own merit. You seem to think that all one has to do is refute evolution and creationism will somehow be seen as the logical alternative. Such is NEVER the case using the scientific method. Creationism must be seen as providing a better explanation than evolution. And when we look at the scientific data compiled over the last 150 years, we see that there simply is no merit whasoever in supposing that creationism explains anything, much less replaces evolution as a valid scientific argument.

Indeed orogenicman.

Statler, if I said disproving evolution proves that we didn't get here by accident and we are infact living in a computer simulation by another race of creatures whose own universe was much better than ours at producing and sustaining life (and had come into existence through natural processes). That explanation has more going for it than the god hypothesis, which is something put there to prevent infinite regress, but fails to explain anything. I'm afraid there are more than 2 possiblities and you can keep making them up (hence as I stated a near infinite range of them could explain us, the earth our solar system etc). The best ones are the ones we have derived through the scientific method and it continues to be refined as we smash more particles together at higher speeds and as we get better telescopes. However if through the scientific method you can prove otherwise then... we are all ears. Otherwise you are just throwing spin and half/no-truths from the sidelines and spouting the same stuff (the politest word there is for it) that comes from convicted fraudsters like Hovind.

[orogenicman]

In Historical Science you never say you "know" anything for sure.

This, of course, is untrue. We know for sure that Stenos' law (the law of superposition) is true.