Fundies Will Be Shitting Bricks

[orogenicman]

Secular scientists start with the premise that the Bible is false, and bend the evidence to fit that premise.

Well, first of all, very few "secular"scientists even bother to study the bible in the first place, so your premise starts out on very bad footing. That said, I know quite a few "secular" individuals who apparently know more about the Bible than many non-secular people do. I know one individual who can quote it at will, and then tell you at length why it is a bunch a crap. And what they start with is what the Bible actually says. Your problem, Statler, is that you begin with the assumption that the Bible is the unerring word of God, and then you try to bend science to your own misguided Biblical beliefs. And THAT, my friend, is about as unscientific as it gets

(Einstein 1961, pp. 22–23)

Erm, Einstein died in 1955.

Einstein reconciled Maxwell's equations for electricity and magnetism with the laws of mechanics by introducing major changes to mechanics close to the speed of light. Established the speed of light as being independent of the frame of reference (which means that it travels at the same velocity in all directions regardless of the reference point) and an "upper limit" on velocity and information transmission in non-esoteric situations, discredited the concept of an "luminiferous ether", and the significance of frames of reference in physics.

First of all, you should not be so confident that this cause happened 13-14 billion years ago, since that is a figure that changes yearly it seems. Secondly, you could not make such a definitive assertion without you yourself being all knowing.

Consider me all-knowing, then.

I don’t believe you could ever prove abiogenesis happened on Earth. Even if we did observe it happening on another planet, this is not logical proof it happened here. That’s like observing a government forming in one country and saying that is proof of how it formed in another country.

This sounds remarkably similar to the arguments that Christians who first conquered North American made in declaring that the natives where somehow less than human, and so it was okay to either destroy them or enslave them. So when we do find life on other planbets, and discover that abiogenesis fits for them, are you going to declare them the work of the devil which needs to be eradicated?

Well I would hope that these scientists you refer to would realize that Avogadro's number (6.0221415 × 1023) is not a very small number at all, but rather a very large number. I think any Junior in high school would know this. I imagine that unlike you these scientists would also realize that there is a big difference between rounding off statistical probabilities and rounding off actual measurements and constants.

Yes, you are correct. It was late when I wrote that, and I was trying to find small numbers very fast and made a mistake with that one. My apologies. I was thinking about the very small quantities of matter that it represents, tiny quantities, actually. Call it a brain fart, if you will. We all have them from time to time. At least I am man enough to admit when I have them. Yes?

So? That’s like saying, “we found naturally occurring rocks, and therefore stone pyramids form themselves!” Amino acids have no natural tendency to arrange themselves. So I am afraid it is you who is merely ignoring the actual science and believing what you want to believe rather than what you should believe.

If I was suggesting that rocks can spontaneously form pyramids, you might have a point. But amino acids do spontaneously form peptides.

In the 1950s and 1960s, Sidney W. Fox studied the spontaneous formation of peptide structures under conditions that might plausibly have existed early in Earth's history. He demonstrated that amino acids could spontaneously form small peptides. These amino acids and small peptides could be encouraged to form closed spherical membranes, called proteinoid microspheres, which show many of the basic characteristics of 'life'.

But let me ask you a question. I believe that we are about 25 years away (or sooner) from showing in the laboratory that abiogenesis is a valid theory. If you are around when that happens, what will be your response?