by Doug Mason 8 Replies latest watchtower bible
I am preparing a Critique that looks at the 51 instances the WTS's brochure "The Origin of Life" uses scientists.
Without preempting what I am looking for, I will appreciate your thoughts on the following Endnotes: 7, 12, 17, 21, 23.
I need you to read what the brochure's author wrote and then compare that with the source.
Thanks,
Doug
Doug,
I see you've had no response so I'll give this a whirl. I've included links and quotes from the brochure in the hope that I'll reduce the workload for the next respondent. This response has taken me a good length of time and I barely get to show off my ignorance. I'm a million miles from knowledgable on cell biology and genetics. I do catch a fair bit of evolution, phylogeny, palaeontology discussion but this really is one of my weak areas so my own comments are kept minimal and fairly broad. I confess I haven't read all the links to the WT article sources yet (too tired). Somebody who knows their stuff could spend hours responding to this.
I've added a couple of links to Youtube vids which might help. Also, see the "Weighted" link I suggested on the other evo thread that is still current here, that may have useful input.
http://www.mediafire.com/file/3wil5bzi59b2l8f/Weighed1.1.pdf/file
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7. Princeton Weekly Bulletin, “Nuts, Bolts of Who We Are,” by Steven Schultz, May 1, 2000, https://pr.princeton.edu/pwb/00/0501/p/brain.shtml
Origin Life - 5 Questions says
"Your body is one of the most complex structures in the universe. It is made up of some 100 trillion tiny cells—bone cells, blood cells, brain cells, to name a few. 7"
They're playing a game of wowing the audience with big numbers.
They like to play the complexity game. It works like this, first note that some things which have the feature of complexity are intelligently designed by humans. Then extend that beyond all logic to conclude that all things which are complex must have an intelligent designer who just so happens to be their God.
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12. Molecular Human Reproduction, “The Role of Proteomics in Defining the Human Embryonic Secretome,” by M. G. Katz-Jaffe, S. McReynolds, D. K. Gardner
https://academic.oup.com/molehr/article/15/5/271/981939
Origin Life - 5 Questions says
"The complex molecules in the simplest living thing cannot reproduce alone. Outside the cell, they break down. Inside the cell, they cannot reproduce without the help of other complex molecules. For example, enzymes are needed to produce a special energy molecule called adenosine triphosphate (ATP), but energy from ATP is needed to produce enzymes. Similarly, DNA (section 3 discusses this molecule) is required to make enzymes, but enzymes are required to make DNA. Also, other proteins can be made only by a cell, but a cell can be made only with proteins. *
* Some of the cells in the human body are made up of about 10,000,000,000 protein molecules 11 of several hundred thousand different kinds. 12"
The reference is only really to the end of the asterisked note but I've given what preceded for context.
I'll shortcut to Jackson Wheat.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OEXtQazdpOs
My note is they're trying to wow the audience with big numbers. They seem to be concluding the current system cannot artise in a single bound (or a few steps). I suspect there might be an analogy between the supposed conundrum here and the way creationists try to use symbiotic relationships as some sort of 'gotcha' which often seem to fall apart on examination.
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17. Research News Berkeley Lab, (http://www.lbl.gov/Science-Articles/Archive/LSD-molecular-DNA.html), article: “Molecular DNA Switch Found to Be the Same for All Life,” contact: Lynn Yarris, p. 1 of 4; accessed 2/10/2009.
Origin Life - 5 Questions says
"Many biologists and other scientists feel that DNA and its coded instructions came about through undirected chance events that took place over the course of millions of years. They say that there is no evidence of design in the structure of this molecule nor in the information that it carries and transmits nor in the way that it functions. 17"
Ah, DNA as computer code again. Analogies have limits and the comparison always breaks when stretched too far.
I'll pass it on to this discussion which I remember being informative at the time though the details escape me now.
Start at 16 minutes mark
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H-SVcqJ8mc4
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21. Nano Letters, “Enumeration of DNA Molecules Bound to a Nanomechanical Oscillator,” by B. Ilic, Y. Yang, K. Aubin, R. Reichenbach, S. Krylov, and H. G. Craighead
Origin Life - 5 Questions says
"The DNA required for the seven billion people living on earth now would barely make a film on the surface of that teaspoon. 21"
Wowing with tiny, tiny, you wouldn't believe how tiny. It's the same game as the big numbers trick.
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23. Essential Cell Biology, Second Edition, by Bruce Alberts, Dennis Bray, Karen Hopkin, Alexander Johnson, Julian Lewis, Martin Raff, Keith Roberts, and Peter Walter, 2004, p. 201.
Origin Life - 5 Questions says
"Above a glass case containing a length of model DNA is a sign that reads: “Push Button for Demonstration.” You push the button, and a narrator explains: “DNA has at least two very important jobs. The first is called replication. DNA has to be copied so that every new cell will have a complete copy of the same genetic information. Please watch this simulation.”
Through a door at one end of the display comes a complex-looking machine. It is actually a cluster of robots closely linked together. The machine goes to the DNA, attaches itself, and begins to move along the DNA as a train might follow a track. It moves a little too fast for you to see exactly what it is doing, but you can easily see that behind it, there are now two complete DNA ropes instead of one.
The narrator explains: “This is a greatly simplified version of what goes on when DNA is replicated. A group of molecular machines called enzymes travel along the DNA, first splitting it in two, then using each strand as a template to make a new, complementary strand. We cannot show you all the parts involved —such as the tiny device that runs ahead of the replication machine and snips one side of the DNA so that it can twirl around freely instead of getting wound up too tight. Nor can we show you how the DNA is ‘proofread’ several times. Errors are detected and corrected to an amazing degree of accuracy.”—See the diagram on pages 16 and 17.
The narrator continues: “What we can show you clearly is the speed. You noticed this robot moving at a pretty good clip, didn’t you? Well, the actual enzyme machinery moves along the DNA ‘track’ at a rate of about 100 rungs, or base pairs, every second. 23"
I'm not sure whether the reference is to the whole section quoted. This extended analogy is probably helpful to give a vague impression of what is going on. As I said above though, analogies have limits.
Wow, LeeT, Thank you.
I have saved your information to my computer and I will go through it very carefully and meticulously..
Thank you!
Doug
I apologise, but I had not wanted to force the direction of any research.
I need to make myself less obscure.
I will appreciate being able to verify whether my findings are correct. Perhaps I have missed something, and I need to make certain I am correct regarding these Endnotes to “The Origin of Life”.
Doug
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Endnote 7
The link provided at Endnote 7 brings up the article by Steven Schultz. Not one of the brochure’s reference words, including: cells, bone, blood, or trillion, appears in the article.
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Endnote 12
Neither the expression “several hundred thousand different kinds” or anything like it, or parts of it, appears in the 7-page article referenced as Endnote 12. The word “million” appears only once.
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Endnote 17
Key word attributed by the brochure at Endnote 17 that do not appear in the Berkeley Lab article include: carries, chance, coded, design, evidence, instructions, transmits, and undirected.
https://www2.lbl.gov/Science-Articles/Archive/LSD-molecular-DNA.html
https://newscenter.lbl.gov/2006/07/17/molecular-dna-switch-found-to-be-the-same-for-all-life/
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Endnote 21
The following words do not appear in this article listed as Endnote 21: dense, information, teaspoonful, instructions, building, 350, humans, alive, today, seven, billion, people, living, earth, barely, make, film, teaspoon.
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Endnote 23:
The passage attributed to Alberts does not mention the “origin of life” or identifying life’s origin.
I could only locate the Third Edition (2009) so I cannot vouch with precision whether the claimed passage appears in the Second Edition. Page 201 of the online Third Edition does not contain the claimed text.
The sole appearance of the word “rungs” is at page 234: “Bases in other configurations are indicated by broken rungs”.
Possibly the closest I could find to the passage in the brochure is:
DNA replication in bacterial and eucaryotic chromosomes is therefore termed bidirectional. The forks move very rapidly—at about 1000 nucleotide pairs per second in bacteria and 100 nucleotide pairs per second in humans. The slower rate of fork movement in humans (indeed, in all eucaryotes) may be due to the difficulties in replicating DNA through the more complex chromatin structure found in these organisms. (Alberts, Bruce (2004). Essential Cell Biology: Third Edition, page 203, online edition)
I could not locate the expression: “enzyme machinery”. Any assistance with locating the passages in Alberts’ books that are presented by the brochure will be greatly appreciated.
Ref 7
I've just checked and found I'd missed the second half of the reference.
The full reference, copy/pasted from the brochure is
7. Princeton Weekly Bulletin, “Nuts, Bolts of Who We Are,” by Steven Schultz, May 1, 2000, (http://www.princeton.edu/pr/pwb/00/0501/p/brain.shtml), accessed 3/27/2009.
a. “The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 2002,” Press Release, October 7, 2002, (http://nobelprize.org/nobel?prizes/medicine/laureates/2002/press.html), accessed 3/27/2009
The first link, as you note, seems quite unrelated to the associated section in the brochure. Indeed, the following quote from the linked article might have started JW readers who had bothered to check sources wondering about how responsible we are for our own morals.
"Greene has proposed that not all moral decisionmaking is the same. Some moral decisions, he argues, are produced in an "abstract" or "cognitive" way, while others are driven by emotional response. The scanning experiment will compare activity in brain areas known to be associated with logical reasoning and activity in areas associated with emotion.
If different kinds of moral questions produce dramatically different patterns of brain activity, that will suggest that "the innate functional organization of the brain, and not just the things we've learned from experience, shapes our moral thought in surprising ways," Greene says."
Oddly enough, RJ Downard makes a related point in the Tortucan videos I've just linked to you on another thread. Namely that ideas we disagree with trigger the part of the brain which deals with revulsion to things like bad smells and disgusting biological ooze.
The second link in the brochure reference is dead, but this press release from the same day on the same prize should help.
https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/medicine/2002/press-release/
I can't see where abouts in the body of the brochure reference '7a' is mentioned. Nor can I find mention of the names of any of the winners or the word Nobel. This prize was awarded for work on programmed cell death.
Maybe they chose not to use this press release because of this quote from it.
It is now clear that one of the signaling pathways in humans leading to cell death is evolutionarily well conserved.
My guess is one of the scholars celebrated for their accuracy and attention to detail in the Nov 2017 JW Broadcasting episode dropped the ball here and entered the wrong reference. What is interesting is that it gives us a glimpse of some of the other material which was damaging to their argument they had been looking at and chose not to use but linked to accidentally.
Ref 12
Again, this looks like a mis-reference. Not only does the linked article not seem to be making the point made in the body text but it is such a generic point that reference to a more accessible dictionary of human biology of similar would be more instructive for the layperson reader than a link to a technical paper on "The role of proteomics in defining the human embryonic secretome."
Ref 17
You can read implications that the researchers whose work is reported here "feel that DNA and its coded instructions came about through undirected chance events that took place over the course of millions of years" but there's no unequivocal statement to that effect.
The cited article says "through the millions of years, evolution has added bells and whistles around this highly conserved central engine.” for example. They clearly believe in evolution, but the WT caricature of evolution simplifies it to "chance events." The cited article nowhere says that DNA isn't originally the handiwork of God.
Thank you LeeT for taking the time and making the effort.
Again I have saved your contribution to my computer where I can study it better.
I appreciate your help,,
Doug
LeeT,
As you point out, there is no Reference 7a in the body of the brochure.
It is my assumption 7a is a Footnote/endnote to Reference 7. The pattern is similar with the others that have the letter "a", etc. - 1, 2, 25, 39, 51. A most unusual process. Most unusual.
Doug
