Creation Seminars

Originally posted by KellyJay
It goes to a lot of what is done here, if anyone brings up a paper what
normally is done is the person who wrote it becomes the issue. If
they hold a religious view that has God in it, that becomes the issue,
again not really going to deeply into the points brought up.

It is a common thing that occurs instead of the points and only the
points getting ...[text shortened]... busy schedule,
so if you said in a month if I'd remind you, you'd do it I'd be happy.
Kelly

I won't have any papers for you in a month I'm afraid. I really have no interest right now in how the eye evolved (if we even know how). Again if you really want to know what the literature says on the issue, just go find an article on-line or request one from your library.

As for creationists.
Behe and Morris I would point out have very, very different views on biology. Behe basically thinks that Morris and young earth creationists don't know anything about biology, for the same reason other scientist don't think that they do. Morris and IRC cringe everytime Behe concedes common descent and billions of years of time. That's why Behe is sooo careful not to identify himself publically with the creationist crowd. That's the whole plan at the Discovery Institute (again the Wedge document).

I don't think attacking Behe is necessary. I do think Morris treads awefully close to being a liar. He has to know that some of what he says is flat wrong. Unfortunately, coming to me for deep specific criticisms of Behe's work is in vain. Ask me for specific problems with certain economic models. That is my area. Now, I can discuss quite a bit of math and modeling assumptions, but to really get into the biological nomenclature and point out specific issues is way beyond me. If you give me Behe's actual formulations for any probabilistic measures (not just his final claims) then I can criticize these as well.

Now, I have written on here that to the extent that Behe points out a challenge to abiogenesis and chemical microevolution, his work is very valuable (it's unfortunate that he only chooses to place this research in the popular press, writing articles on other subjects instead for his peers.)

As for his philosophical assumptions, I think it's plainly obvious that his leap to an "intelligent designer" is weak. Without specifying anything about what an "intelligent designer" is (and outside of church groups, ID people are extremely careful to avoid doing so) we have no way of postulating what an intelligent designer does. Since we are not saying anything about what an intelligent designer is, how can we say that some empirical fact suggests its presence? Simply claiming that evolution is a poor alternative does not imply any other particular hypothesis.

To be precise "intelligent designer" can only be defined as "something other than evolutionary processes," but this could be anything, including some other natural process. This last possibility is strengthened by your rejection of uniformitarianism. Perhaps the laws of nature were different when life rose from non-life, and these laws made it extremely likely that such a thing would occur. Maybe the process that was responsible is gone now? Non-uniformitarianism is very flexible and convenient. It can be used to the advantage of the creationist (speed of light changed) and the non-creationist alike.

As you can tell, I have much more respect for Behe than Morris. I personally think Morris is charlatan. Debunking all of his claims would basically amount to us doing a copy and paste battle. I don't think that's valuable. I know I don't understand all the nuances of the biological arguments, and I suspect you do not as well (No offense). As far as Morris goes, I'll agree with Behe that he is more a liability than an asset when it comes to biology.

Originally posted by dj2becker
You can freely download these Creation Seminars by Dr Kent Hovind. For any Bible believing Christians these seminars are a must-see. They are awesome. I could even recommend them to to any hard core evolutionist wrapped in cotton-wool. They are life-changing.

http://www.biblebelievers.com/hovind/index.html

Does he use bible quotes to prove the veracity of the bible? Those're always my fave-raves.

Originally posted by dj2becker
If Biology opened your eyes, then why is it that you never even answer one of the simplest questions that I have asked:

How did life form from non-life without intelligent intervention?

If you fail to answer this simple question, then I would more freely accept that your Bio profs blinded you...

I answered this question. Why do you keep asking it?

Originally posted by AThousandYoung
I answered this question. Why do you keep asking it?

As you know Thousand, dj2 keeps asking because he doesn't want an answer.

Originally posted by AThousandYoung
I answered this question. Why do you keep asking it?

Because I am not satisfied with your answer. All you said is that Chemistry explains it.... Then you come up with the Brownian motion. That is all you said. You have explained nothing about how Brownian motion creates life. Besides, you have offered NO proof.

Originally posted by telerion
I must decline KJ. I'm pretty busy right now and so I must restrict my outside research on this forum. I will spend ample time here though ranting. 🙂

I wonder why you don't search for some good papers on your own? Why wait for others to bring them to you? I'm not really interested in persuading you any longer. If you are really interested in why ...[text shortened]... ief honestly and looking forward to what new and exciting truths I may discover about the world.

Sorry telerion, I actually over looked you saying "I must decline KJ."
I wouldn't have asked you to go into detail again. I guess I simply
skimmed over it. Sorry, my bad.
Kelly

Originally posted by dj2becker
Because I am not satisfied with your answer. All you said is that Chemistry explains it.... Then you come up with the Brownian motion. That is all you said. You have explained nothing about how Brownian motion creates life. Besides, you have offered NO proof.

Why should he explain how Brownian Motion creates life? Is it not the same as when you say God created life? How does God create life? I expect you might answer "by His Word," but then we must ask how "His Word" creates life.

It's true that frogstomp hasn't really explained how Brownian Motion accomplishes the creation of life, but you have demonstrated no understanding of what Brownian Motion is. Right now, I expect he could give you an account, and you wouldn't have a clue what he was saying. Then you'll be in a position to critique what he says when he gives his explaination.

BTW: That's how a lot of us criticize your arguments. We've read the Bible.

Originally posted by KellyJay
Sorry telerion, I actually over looked you saying "I must decline KJ."
I wouldn't have asked you to go into detail again. I guess I simply
skimmed over it. Sorry, my bad.
Kelly

No problem. I must look like quite the hypocrite, whining about my constrained time and then ranting on and on. 🙂

Originally posted by David C
Does he use bible quotes to prove the veracity of the bible? Those're always my fave-raves.

I watched one of the seminars and yes, he quotes the bible frequently. It is the only "proof" on creationism that he has.

Ridicules science and then preaches his dogma.

One thing in particular that caught my attention was how he mentioned that considering the big bang exploded from a spinning super dense particle. All the matter that got ejected out would have all spun in the same direction due to the conservation of momentum. He equated this to people being thrown off a merry-go-round. Although true that the people being thrown off would be spinning in the opposite direction to the merry-go-round, this is a very simplistic analogy to cosmological events. After this chaotic event of sub-atomic particles being ejected out and condensing over billions of years, would you expect everything to be spinning in the same direction?

Originally posted by telerion
No problem. I must look like quite the hypocrite, whining about my constrained time and then ranting on and on. 🙂

Not really, at least in my eyes. Some posts do not require a lot of
thought, others do. I was asking for one that was going to require
a great deal of thought to do it justice, and because of that I
understood how you could go on in other posts that you could indeed
answer with off the top responces, and not want to put the time into
another type.
Kelly

Originally posted by lausey

I watched one of the seminars and yes, he quotes the bible frequently. It is the only "proof" on creationism that he has.

Ridicules science and then preaches his dogma.

One thing in particular that caught my attention was how he mentioned that considering the big bang exploded from a spinning super dense particle. All the matter that got ejected out ...[text shortened]... sing over billions of years, would you expect everything to be spinning in the same direction?

There were several things he brought up, that was one, one of the
weakest in my opinion, but only thing he brought up.
Kelly

Originally posted by telerion
Why should he explain how Brownian Motion creates life? Is it not the same as when you say God created life? How does God create life? I expect you might answer "by His Word," but then we must ask how "His Word" creates life.

It's true that frogstomp hasn't really explained how Brownian Motion accomplishes the creation of life, but you have demo ...[text shortened]... aination.

BTW: That's how a lot of us criticize your arguments. We've read the Bible.

I do have a predisposition towards thinking people should know a bit of chemistry before they declare it isn't science.

In other places I've told him what was needed and since Brownian motion is random movement of particles in solution it's really not a quantum leap to the obvious conclusion : i.e. chemistry explains all the steps required for abiogenesis.
Brownian motion was just part of the process.

Originally posted by frogstomp
I do have a predisposition towards thinking people should know a bit of chemistry before they declare it isn't science.

In other places I've told him what was needed and since Brownian motion is random movement of particles in solution it's really not a quantum leap to the obvious conclusion : i.e. chemistry exp ...[text shortened]... all the steps required for abiogenesis.
Brownian motion was just part of the process.

When dj2 speaks of 'funding' BM, he clearly has not taken our advice and read even the slightest bit about the subject. How could he know that not only is Brownian Motion an observed empirical fact, but that the models describing it (of the same name) are well-established mathematics and permeate fields from chemistry to physics, finance and economics to biology and meteorology?

For those who do not know what Brownian Motion is, read through dj2's posts again and substitute in the phrase 'Pythagorean's Theorem' every where he says 'Brownian Motion' or 'BM.' Then you will see why we are so dumbstruck by his galling ignorance.

Originally posted by dj2becker
Because I am not satisfied with your answer. All you said is that Chemistry explains it.... Then you come up with the Brownian motion. That is all you said. You have explained nothing about how Brownian motion creates life. Besides, you have offered NO proof.

I did not "come up with Brownian motion". Frogstomp did.

I am referring to this answer:

The Earth probably formed about 4.5 billions years ago. It was a hot, inorganic ball of rock with oceans and an atmosphere containing nitrogen, carbon and hydrogen atoms in some gaseous form or another, but no oxygen gas (O2). I don't really know what molecules these atoms were organized into, but it doesn't really matter. When gasses of made up of these elements are exposed to lightning, ultraviolet light or heat, simple organic molecules will form, as demonstrated by Stanley Miller and Harold Urey in 1953, and I believe others since.

Amino acids, short proteins, nucleotides, ATP (and probably other nucleoside triphosphates), and other molecules characteristic of living things are some of the organic molecules that have been observed to form in laboratory recreations of these conditions. In addition, we know from present day meteorites that such meteorites often cary such simple organic molecules with them. Such molecules are vulnerable to uv radiation exposure from the sun (no ozone layer yet) but some places, like tidal pools hidden under rocky shelfs, would be shielded from uv exposure.

Some such pools would have had ocean water splashing into them during high tide, bringing with it the organic molecules in it, and during low tide some of the water in the pool might have evaporated. By this or some other mechanism pools of water sheltered from uv radiation would become highly enriched in the organic molecules. As there was not yet any life and no free oxygen, these molecules had no environmental influences that would break them down.

When organic molecules like these are placed in concentrated enough solutions, they spontaneously react to form more complex organic molecules, such as RNA.

RNA molecules with all kinds of random sequences would spontaneously form. Now we know that RNA, like proteins, folds into specific configurations depending on the sequence of bases it is made up of. Sometimes the folded RNA is catalytic; that is, it makes an enzyme. Such RNA enzymes are called ribozymes.

Now RNA, like DNA, already has an obvious mechanism by which it could replicate itself. This is the point at which substances began to catalyze the synthesis of smaller molecules into copies of themselves; that is, they reproduced. Being genetic material with no proofreading systems with the potential to be exposed to uv light, such RNA chains began to mutate into chains with slightly different base sequences. Any of these which folded into enzymes that catalyzed their own reproduction would begin to out compete the other RNA chains in terms of reproduction and using up the raw materials for reproduction. The process of evolution has begun, even before life existed.

Now, it's been shown that amphipathic molecules like phospholipids will tend to aggregate and form one of three different formations depending on the conditions; micelles, solid molecular sized balls of phospholipid molecules, a bilayer, or flat sheet (which would need to be anchored on the edges away from water), or a combination of the two, a vesicle. A vesicle is lipid bilayer bent into a spherical shape and closed upon itself. Such vesicles trap water and the contents of water in their cavities when they form. Small molecules can pass through the phospholipid bilayers of such vesicles far more easily than larger molecules.

Some of these vesicles probably formed around RNA which was already evolved into a form that catalyzed it's own reproduction quite effectively. Such RNA still had access to the small molecules it needed as raw material for self reproduction, but large molecules that might damage it or otherwise interfere were kept out. The RNA would reproduce and reproduce, and the new ribozymes wouldn't be able to get out of the vesicle. Maybe more than one kind of self replicating RNA would get trapped inside the vesicle and begin to reproduce.

This stage of prebiotic evolution is known as the protocell. Such protocells could collect more and more phospholipid molecules and keep reproducing the RNA inside, causing the protocell to grow.

At this point, a number of the characteristics of life have come into being. The protocell has begun to aquire and use materials and energy from it's environment and to convert them into different forms. It was growing. It had the capacity to evolve. And, once these things grew big enough, and possibly with the help of the ribozymes inside, they would divide. This is reproduction of the entire protocell.

Now, sometimes more than one molecule of RNA would get trapped inside and begin to self-replicate; sometimes some copies of the RNA inside the protocell would mutate into different forms. In this way different enzymes would come into being, providing a more varied environment inside the protocell. Sometimes these various chains of RNA would begin to specialize into symbiotic relationships, helping one another reproduce and do other things.

As you can see, it makes perfect sense based on much experiment that such a pattern of change from inorganic, simple molecules to complexity in the form of protocells could plausibly come into being. Any entropy lessened in the formation and reproduction of these ordered objects would be compensated for by breakup of nucleoside triphosphates. This effectively changes sunlight or other ordered forms of energy to heat, which I think counts as increased entropy. So, unlike what some creationists suggest, the Second Law of Thermodynamics is not broken by this proposed mechanism.

Some of these ribozymes would begin to assemble amino acids into short chains through catalysis of dehydration reactions. Once proteins were being formed, similar evolution would produce protein catalysts or enzymes. At some point some RNA would catalyze the formation of the more stable DNA molecules, which would take over as the genetic material of these protocells.

At this point we pretty much have a primitive cell, or something close to it. Life is a poorly defined word, so there isn't any exact moment at which one could say it has been crossed. It's more of a long process full of small changes that caused the protocell - not alive - to the cell - alive. The cell then began to evolve, but that's beyond the scope of the question asked here.

http://www.redhotpawn.com/board/showthread.php?threadid=20290&page=1

Originally posted by AThousandYoung
I did not "come up with Brownian motion". Frogstomp did.

I am referring to this answer:

[b]The Earth probably formed about 4.5 billions years ago. It was a hot, inorganic ball of rock with oceans and an atmosphere containing nitrogen, carbon and hydrogen atoms in some gaseous form or another, but no oxygen gas (O2). I don't really know what ...[text shortened]... ed here.

http://www.redhotpawn.com/board/showthread.php?threadid=20290&page=1

[/b]

Thought I show a mechanism, Tried to simplify it for him.