What beliefs would we consider reasonable for a self proclaimed Christian to hold?

[polymath257]

I agree with your points and your argument. However by agreeing I would like to point out that everyone should also be skeptical about abiogenesis as there is no solid evidence to it's extraordinary claims that life began from some hypothetical primordial soup that was thought to exist on the pre life earth. This sounds too much like the fictional story of Frankenstein. At least in the story of Frankenstein body parts were used to bring him to life. You may say that life on earth is evidence of abiogenesis. However life on earth can also be used as evidence of intelligent design. In fact I am very much a skeptic of abiogenesis. The chances of the biogenesis Hypothesis ever happening are 1 in 10 to the 40,000th power. It would be more likely to find a brand new F-16 on the dark side of the moon. I therefore would like to know why anyone would trust in the abiogenesis hypothesis?I don't see it as being of any more value to anyone than ID since neither one have been proven.

---

I want to point out that this type of figure is often quoted, but it has no solid foundation. The problem is that is assumes that a cell has to pop into existence as a complete unit in a single step with no precursors at all. NOBODY makes such a claim!

Furthermore, the usual 'computation' that leads to such absurd numbers makes some assumptions about probabilistic independence (even at the level of proteins) that are known to be incorrect. Among others: that only a single string of amino acids would perform the job of a given protein, that there is no precursor to that protein, that the amino acids are integrated in sequence and each is probabilistically independent from the rest, etc.
Every single one of these assumptions is known to be wrong. In almost every case, there is *far* more flexibility in protein composition than the calculation claims. And, again, the formation of a protein of 200 amino acids is NOT thought to happen in a single step, but via the merging of smaller, but useful (maybe for different reactions!) proteins.

And, of course, this completely neglects the RNA world that is strongly suspected as a precursor to the current protein based biology.
Sorry, but your F-16 claim is irrelevant to the reality of the chemistry of life.

[drfuzzy]

[He lives]

I agree with your points and your argument. However by agreeing I would like to point out that everyone should also be skeptical about abiogenesis as there is no solid evidence to it's extraordinary claims that life began from some hypothetical primordial soup that was thought to exist on the pre life earth. This sounds too much like the fictional story of Frankenstein. At least in the story of Frankenstein body parts were used to bring him to life. You may say that life on earth is evidence of abiogenesis. However life on earth can also be used as evidence of intelligent design. In fact I am very much a skeptic of abiogenesis. The chances of the biogenesis Hypothesis ever happening are 1 in 10 to the 40,000th power. It would be more likely to find a brand new F-16 on the dark side of the moon. I therefore would like to know why anyone would trust in the abiogenesis hypothesis?I don't see it as being of any more value to anyone than ID since neither one have been proven.

---

I want to point out that this type of figure is often quoted, but it has no solid foundation. The problem is that is assumes that a cell has to pop into existence as a complete unit in a single step with no precursors at all. NOBODY makes such a claim!

Furthermore, the usual 'computation' that leads to such absurd numbers makes some assumptions about probabilistic independence (even at the level of proteins) that are known to be incorrect. Among others: that only a single string of amino acids would perform the job of a given protein, that there is no precursor to that protein, that the amino acids are integrated in sequence and each is probabilistically independent from the rest, etc.
Every single one of these assumptions is known to be wrong. In almost every case, there is *far* more flexibility in protein composition than the calculation claims. And, again, the formation of a protein of 200 amino acids is NOT thought to happen in a single step, but via the merging of smaller, but useful (maybe for different reactions!) proteins.

And, of course, this completely neglects the RNA world that is strongly suspected as a precursor to the current protein based biology.
Sorry, but your F-16 claim is irrelevant to the reality of the chemistry of life.

Francis Crick believed the origin of life was almost a miracle. He thought life might have been seeded from another planet.

[Amarok]

Your dense lived 

[drfuzzy]

I want to point out that this type of figure is often quoted, but it has no solid foundation. The problem is that is assumes that a cell has to pop into existence as a complete unit in a single step with no precursors at all. NOBODY makes such a claim!

Furthermore, the usual 'computation' that leads to such absurd numbers makes some assumptions about probabilistic independence (even at the level of proteins) that are known to be incorrect. Among others: that only a single string of amino acids would perform the job of a given protein, that there is no precursor to that protein, that the amino acids are integrated in sequence and each is probabilistically independent from the rest, etc.
Every single one of these assumptions is known to be wrong. In almost every case, there is *far* more flexibility in protein composition than the calculation claims. And, again, the formation of a protein of 200 amino acids is NOT thought to happen in a single step, but via the merging of smaller, but useful (maybe for different reactions!) proteins.

And, of course, this completely neglects the RNA world that is strongly suspected as a precursor to the current protein based biology.
Sorry, but your F-16 claim is irrelevant to the reality of the chemistry of life.

Francis Crick believed the origin of life was almost a miracle. He thought life might have been seeded from another planet.

I find your name-dropping of Francis Crick to be very odd.  This is the same guy who said about Christianity:  "I do not respect Christian beliefs. I think they are ridiculous. If we could get rid of them we could more easily get down to the serious problem of trying to find out what the world is all about." and "Christianity may be OK between consenting adults in private but should not be taught to young children."

Yes, he did espouse directed panspermia in the 1970's, but in 1993, in the article "Anticipating an RNA world. Some past speculations on the origin of life: where are they today?" (now found on PubMed, just go to a good library with research databases and you can read it) he states that in the past he was "clearly overly pessimistic about the chances of

(wait for it)

ABIOGENESIS.

[Amarok]

Francis Crick believed the origin of life was almost a miracle. He thought life might have been seeded from another planet.

Crick considered it possible life could have started somewhere else . He never stated it as a fact . and nor does it matter . And no ID is a overwhelmingly religious movement . And saying life was seeded by aliens only pushes the problem back .

.so many are the conditions which would have had to have been satisfied to get it going. But this should not be taken to imply that there are good reasons to believe that it could not have started on the earth by a perfectly reasonable sequence of fairly ordinary chemical reactions. The plain fact is that the time available was too long, the many microenvironments on the earth's surface too diverse, the various chemical possibilities too numerous and our own knowledge and imagination too feeble to allow us to be able to unravel exactly how it might or might not have happened such a long time ago, especially as we have no experimental evidence from that era to check our ideas against.

As for the miracle quote here is what creationists leave out or distort . He's talking about problems in research of his time . Not that life is a literal miracle .

[GrandizerII]

lol, life coming coming from another form of life on another planet, doesn't refute abiogenesis in the general sense, because it could easily mean that abiogenesis occurred on another planet.

[The Grand Nudger]

Francis Crick believed something.  Quick..everybody..stop the presses!  A person believes something...this is groundbreaking! Never before in the history of mankind has anyone believed something...surely, we should all assent to the beliefs of Francis Crick.

[He lives]

[Kitan Etos]