'Evolution' definition can include 'origin of life'

by hooberus 14 Replies latest watchtower beliefs

  • hooberus
    hooberus

    The popular Berkeley evolution site (while responding to the misconception that Evolution is just "a theory about the origin of life" does state:

    "Evolutionary theory does encompass ideas and evidence regarding life's origins (e.g., whether or not it happened near a deep-sea vent, which organic molecules came first, etc.), but this is not the central focus of evolutionary theory. Most of evolutionary biology deals with how life changed after its origin. Regardless of how life started, afterwards it branched and diversified, and most studies of evolution are focused on those processes."

    Note the words again:

    "Evolutionary theory does encompass ideas and evidence regarding life's origins"

    source: https://evolution.berkeley.edu/evolibrary/misconceptions_teacherfaq.php#a1

  • cofty
    cofty

    I agree. The definition of evolution can include how life began, but how different disciplines of science agree to divide up the workload adds up to nothing more than a semantic debate.

    Every species - including the 99.9% of species that have gone extinct - descended over millions of years by unguided evolution using processes including but not limited to natural selection.

    That process got started after geochemistry gave rise to biochemistry - a process known as abiogenesis. This happened amazingly quickly after the earth formed but it was not until the arise of eukaryotic cells that complex life got going. It is possible that bacterial life will turn out to be very common in our galaxy but life of the sort we are familiar with might be unique to earth.

    You can read about this amazing event known as endosymbiosis here...

    The relationship between species is investigated by biologists, geneticists and paleontologists among others. Abiogenesis is mostly the domain of chemistry and bioenergetics.

    Creationists always want to deflect from the overwhelming evidence for evolution - post Cambrian explosion in particular - by demanding a detailed explanation of abiogenesis. The Watchtower does this every time it addresses the subject.

    Evolution is a fact...

  • waton
    waton
    demanding a detailed explanation of abiogenesis.

    C: For science to work out that sequence, the conditions, the substances involved, their origin, and replicate that process even without success, would require work,

    why is that not true of the original event on this planet? or anywhere?

    Our most advanced workers work at a distance. and off topic:

    at this very hour I am reading " Outgrowing God " by R. Dawking, and just found this error in sentence construction, 256 first line page 257." the Sun-- moves from east to west--so do the stars , if you have the patience to observe their changing position"

    I am reading his work with care.

  • Vidiot
    Vidiot

    cofty - "...how different disciplines of science agree to divide up the workload adds up to nothing more than a semantic debate...

    ...Creationists always want to deflect from the overwhelming evidence for evolution - post Cambrian explosion in particular - by demanding a detailed explanation of abiogenesis. The Watchtower does this every time it addresses the subject."

    I remember when I first realized that, and I wondered why the hell they used such shady arguing techniques... it reminded me of the tactics used by lawyers on the losing side of a court case. Then I saw that all other creationists used the same techniques, and that the Org's arguments weren't even all that original...

    ...after which I immediately asked myself, "if the only way creationists can refute evolution is by misdirection, out-of-context quotes, and semantic pretzel-twisting, WTF does that say about creationism?"

    I scratched me head as to why the Org would behave in such a shady manner, until it slowly dawned on me that WT cosmology was dependent on the Eden narrative being literal history, and that if they ever budged on evolution, they'd have to rewrite huge swaths of WT theology from scratch.

    The bottom line is that despite what they may say, creationists don't reject evolution because it's unscientific or implausible. They reject it for ideological reasons.

  • Earnest
    Earnest

    As a matter of interest, today (24th November) is the 160th anniversary of the publication of On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection by Charles Darwin.

    A discussion of his life and letters at the time can be found in the Darwin Correspondence Project. Particularly interesting are the reviews of friends and critics.

  • waton
    waton

    Sugars, essential for life [s start] found on Meteorites,

  • waton
    waton

    Abiogenesis could turn out to have been an evolutionary process, in the sense that only the viable sequence survived and passed on life.

    many false starts, cul de sacs, survival of the fittest start - up.

  • Sea Breeze
    Sea Breeze
    Most of evolutionary biology deals with how life changed after its origin. Regardless of how life started, afterwards it branched and diversified, and most studies of evolution are focused on those processes."

    Materialistic neo-Darwinism is a view that there have been enough viable chance mutations to allow natural selection to account for the present diversity of life. Critiques of this position have constructed models using the rate of mutations and the age of life on earth to show that chance could not have been the cause.

    Those critiques, although repeatedly made, have simply entered the culture war between atheists and theists, but they have not been adequately answered and so neo-Darwinism, from a purely rational perspective, has been falsified.

    Those who have gone out of their way to declare their doubt about Darwin include :


    - 100 scientists with master's degrees or Ph.D.s listed over at AiG
    - 200 Ph.D.s listed at Australia's creation.com
    - 300 medical doctors at Physicians & Surgeons for Scientific Integrity
    - 500 Ph.D. scientists at the Korean Association of Creation Research
    - 600 advanced degreed scientists at the Creation Research Society
    - 1,000 scientists who signified their opposition at DissentFromDarwin.org
    - 3,000 scientists and professors (most of whom hold a Ph.D. in some field of science) who reject secular Darwinism to varying degrees as named online by Dr. Jerry Bergman


    Add to these 5,000 Scientists, Ph.D.s. and Scholars, these folks, all identified by careful research conducted by pro-Darwin institutions:

    - 30,000 U.S. public high school biology teachers do not endorse Darwinism in class
    - 100,000 college professors in the U.S. alone who, according to Harvard researchers, agree that "intelligent design IS a serious scientific alternative to the Darwinian theory of evolution."
    - 570,000 medical doctors in the U.S., specialists in applied science, say God brought about or directly created humans, as reported by the prestigious Louis Finkelstein Institute. The field of medicine is an actual applied science (see definition and applied science section below) within biology, practiced by highly educated professionals. Significantly, 60% of U.S. medical doctors reject the secular Darwinist explanation for our existence with three of five docs agreeing that either God initiated and guided the process that led to human life or that God specially created us human beings.

    Yale prof. David Gelernter* Another Scholar, Yale University Prof. David Gelernter, Giving Up Darwin: Biology is increasingly understood in terms of information science. So from his relevant field, Yale "rock star" professor of computer science and contributor to parallel computing, David Gelernter, writes in Giving Up Darwin:

    To help create a brand new form of organism, a mutation must affect a gene that does its job early and controls the expression of other genes that come into play later on as the organism grows. But mutations to these early-acting "strategic" genes, which create the big body-plan changes required by macro-evolution, seem to be invariably fatal... Evidently there are a total of no examples in the literature of mutations that affect early development and the body plan as a whole and are not fatal.

    * The Third Way: Twenty highly-credentialed anti-creationists at The Third Way agree with young-earth creationists on this specific point, that the natural selection mechanism of neo-Darwinism cannot account for the diversity of life. These "Third Way" scientists, who by blind faith believe that their must be a third way other than Creation and Darwinism, include molecular biologists, etc., from institutions like Oxford, the University of Chicago, Tel Aviv University, MIT, University of Vienna, University of Bonn, UCLA, and Princeton.


    * Honorable Mention:

    - 2.5 Million U.S. scientists and engineers believe in a personal God. This number comes from the 40% who believe in a personal God as reported by the New York Times in 1997 (see below). That percentage had stayed constant over the 80 years since the survey was first carried out in 1917. If that result has stayed consistent again over the past 20 years, then based on our 2016 population of more than 6.2 million scientists and engineers, two and a half million of them believe in God!

  • Doug Mason
    Doug Mason

    Quantum mechanics

  • cofty
    cofty

    Sea Breeze - That is load of vacuous nonsense!

    Critiques of this position have constructed models using the rate of mutations and the age of life on earth to show that chance could not have been the cause.

    I could construct a model to show absolutely any crazy proposition you wish to mention.

    Bullshit in --- > Bullshit out.

    Models of this sort are shown to be wrong by the hard evidence of paleontology and genetics that prove the fact of evolution. The models are constructed by religiously motivated ideologues who don't understand the subject they are criticising.

    Literally nobody cares that zillions of Muslim and fundy-xtian surgeons, dentists, high school teachers, and homeopaths reject the foundation of biology. Your list of dissenting organisations is hilarious by the way.

    Why do so many ex-JWs have so much trouble getting over creationism?

    Evolution is a Fact...

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