(February 18, 2016 at 11:27 pm)TheRocketSurgeon Wrote: More importantly, it's an explanation of how cells work now, after 4 Billion Years of evolution.
He knows damned well that no one thinks the original cells used the complex structures that have evolved, which he keeps describing.
He knows damned well that they have found so many alternative ways to do the things he's saying are impossible without some Designer that we can't even tell which of the methods is the most likely, and thus worthy of the most resources to research, so we have different teams looking at all of them (NASA/JPL has a great set of links to the different teams working on the abiogenesis question, and the methods they're investigating, but I don't feel like digging it up again) to try to figure out how it occurred naturally.
Given that for 9/10ths of life on earth, there was nothing but bacteria doing the evolving, and a bacterium's generational time is measured in hours or at most days, not years, the 4BY timeline of our evolutionary heritage represents literally a trillion generations, in order to get where our DNA-based systems are, today.
And no, to answer your question. I was a theist when I started my degree, and the more I learned about how life actually works and how it evolved on this planet, the less I thought some "Designer" was necessary... especially while memorizing biosynthetic pathways (you have my sympathies!) for Biochem. In particular, I was put off by learning how things worked, and then watching guys like Ken Hamm deliberately (it has to be deliberate!!) lie to audiences, when they came to my university, about what science knows and how it works.
By the time I graduated, I was an outspoken atheist.
Well obviously the first cells wouldn't have been that complex, but when making statements like that about the past, you have now left the evidence and gone into speculation. That's fine, but when a scientist speculates, it can wrongly get associated with the empirical science that we all agree is where we should base our views. And I agree, it is not fun to watch someone who disagrees with evolution do such a poor job at attacking it like Ray Comfort or whatever. But just because they use weak arguments doesn't mean there view is completely wrong. I've seen some pretty bad atheist arguments too.
The problem I have with these biosynthetic pathways evolving is the mechanism. I don't like the mechanism of mutation as the source of variation. It's a weak force. I think that most of the observed variation is explained by changes in gene expression due to epigenetic factors. The environment induces a change in the phenotype without damaging the genotype. Evolution is our capstone course though, and I'm only a junior, so I'll be taking it next year.
