http://creationontheweb.com/content/view/6015
Oh wow. Isn't this something? Close-up photos of temple carvings at Angkor (in Cambodia) show, among other things, something that looks suspiciously like a dinosaur of the Stegosaur variety. These carvings are 800 years old. How on earth did the people who made the temple even KNOW what a stegosaur looked like? The amusing part is Stegosaurus as-we-know it was discovered in North America. This isn't to say that there were absolutely no Stegosaurid bones in Asia, but come on. 800 years ago, they're not going to be assembling bones of dinos after working in the coal mines or whatever and put them in the Smithsonian. They had other things to worry about. The carvings depict Hindu and Buddhist mythology, but they also depict ordinary everyday life scenes. And nobody is aware of any Hindu mythology where there is a Stegosaurus.
See, this is the pitfall of Evolutionary thought: they dogmatically assume and insist that because something "vanished" in the fossil record, that then is when it went extinct. This is based on the dubious idea that all the layers of earth represent various geological time periods over millions or billions of years. They were wrong about the Coelacanth. They were wrong about the Wollemi Pine of Australia. Who knows what else they are wrong about?
Monday, September 22, 2008
Friday, August 15, 2008
*sniff* "But God is meaaaaaaaan..."
Sometimes I have to wonder at humanity's general capacity to look at the bigger picture. A lot of people who find themselves disliking the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob will do so on a basis that is, to say the least, based in immaturity.
Take for example, the reflexive RAGE at God's actions in the Old Testament. Whether it's smiting the Heathens in Egypt and Canaan or somewhere along the way, or causing the deaths of sinful Israelites, or making up rules that seem unfair and meant to deprive people of fun, you will find individuals who take their own ideas of morality and try to pigeonhole them into an era where their comfortable lives would be completely alien, and with predictable results.
Some will even make up or assume that God demanded Human Sacrifice, based on interpretations of passages that hold less water than a holey thimble. Seriously, if God desired actual human sacrifice, He'd have the priests slaughtering human beings on those temple altars, not cattle and other assorted livestock. God demanding that certain people receive the Death Penalty for their sins or atrocities does /not/ qualify as sacrifice.
There are instances where Israelites practiced (child) human sacrifice, but this was based upon pagan customs, not on anything God told them to do. In fact He got very upset with them when they did this. Anywhere this is mentioned, these things are done in relation to Moloch and other associated Canaanite deities.
So, then, why would God use Death to punish people? Why not just throw them in Jail? Well, especially during the Exodus, when the people were on the move, Jail was absolutely not an option. It would have required the construction of a sturdy structure meant to house people and keep them from escaping, which is just not going to happen On the Road. There is evidence that this infrastructure is not possible until Israel starts getting Kings (the first of which was Saul). You will notice that *&^% settles down after the first King is appointed. This is because the authority to deal with *&^% is passed in some way to the King, and it would be more practical for a King with the taxpayers' money at his disposal to start building things like prisons. Out in the wilderness, what options are there? Exile? That's a 90% death sentence right there--especially in a desert with hostile nomads at every corner (*coughcoughAmalekitescoughcough*). In the desert on the road, society was always "one paycheck away" from homelessness and chaos. In order to keep order and make it look like He means it, God would have to institute very harsh punishments. Any person stubborn or stupid enough to run afoul of such rules qualifies for a Darwin Award.
But was the Death Penalty justified? In a time where survival was not only paramount, but practically the only consideration, yes it was. Think of it like this: Imagine a situation akin to the "Nuclear Option." There is someone who wants someone else dead, and the only way to stop them is to kill them. Due to circumstances of legality, putting them in jail is not an option at all. Then, what is a person to do? What sort of actions would be justified to save the life of the person who's been threatened?
In short, all God's actions were to protect His people. He had not only to deal with outsiders that threatened the Israelites (i.e. Egyptians, Amalekites, Moabites, Midianites, Canaanites, etc) in various ways, He also had to deal with internal problems of various individual Israelites going bad on Him.
Unthinkingly reflexive objectors do not see this. They insist that God is capricious and a bloodthirsty war god without taking into account that God was doing what was necessary to make sure that Israel survived as a people and a country.
They also do not see how merciful and patient God actually is. When they rage about the Firstborn in Egypt dropping dead as a result of God sending out the hitman known as the Angel of Death™, they completely ignore the fact that God gave Egypt 400 years to smarten up on their own. But it didn't happen, so He smartened them up for them. He smartened them up so well, that they never used slave labor for building the Pyramids. Ditto the Canaanites--that 400 years that Israel spent in Egypt was also a grace period for Canaan and its own wickedness. But they ended up getting worse too, as evidenced by their practice of child sacrifice and other things that were not nice. And they had word ahead too; the Spies that Israel sent to Jericho found out from Rahab that pretty much EVERYBODY knew what the God of Israel had done to the Egyptians, the Moabites, and everybody else in between. So it's not like this came as a complete surprise.
Israel, of course, didn't actually doooooo everything they were supposed to do. They left some Canaanites around and soon got hooked into their practices, like a kid being introduced to crack for the first time. And like a crack addict, Israel's society started deteriorating to the point of near self-destruction. This is what God wanted to avoid.
You know people are borderline insane (or outright fruitloops flapjacks kooky) when they invest a great deal of mental and physical energy objecting to something which they don't actually believe really happened. After all, how many Star Wars "geeks" get truly viscerally angry at Darth Vader for obliterating the planet Aldebaran with the Death Star in Star Wars IV? I mean really, REALLY angry? So much so that they go on massive polemics about how mean Darth Vader is, despite the fact that Darth Vader does not exist? And if they do, do you question their mental stability? Of course you do! Because that's craaaaazy.
Take for example, the reflexive RAGE at God's actions in the Old Testament. Whether it's smiting the Heathens in Egypt and Canaan or somewhere along the way, or causing the deaths of sinful Israelites, or making up rules that seem unfair and meant to deprive people of fun, you will find individuals who take their own ideas of morality and try to pigeonhole them into an era where their comfortable lives would be completely alien, and with predictable results.
Some will even make up or assume that God demanded Human Sacrifice, based on interpretations of passages that hold less water than a holey thimble. Seriously, if God desired actual human sacrifice, He'd have the priests slaughtering human beings on those temple altars, not cattle and other assorted livestock. God demanding that certain people receive the Death Penalty for their sins or atrocities does /not/ qualify as sacrifice.
There are instances where Israelites practiced (child) human sacrifice, but this was based upon pagan customs, not on anything God told them to do. In fact He got very upset with them when they did this. Anywhere this is mentioned, these things are done in relation to Moloch and other associated Canaanite deities.
So, then, why would God use Death to punish people? Why not just throw them in Jail? Well, especially during the Exodus, when the people were on the move, Jail was absolutely not an option. It would have required the construction of a sturdy structure meant to house people and keep them from escaping, which is just not going to happen On the Road. There is evidence that this infrastructure is not possible until Israel starts getting Kings (the first of which was Saul). You will notice that *&^% settles down after the first King is appointed. This is because the authority to deal with *&^% is passed in some way to the King, and it would be more practical for a King with the taxpayers' money at his disposal to start building things like prisons. Out in the wilderness, what options are there? Exile? That's a 90% death sentence right there--especially in a desert with hostile nomads at every corner (*coughcoughAmalekitescoughcough*). In the desert on the road, society was always "one paycheck away" from homelessness and chaos. In order to keep order and make it look like He means it, God would have to institute very harsh punishments. Any person stubborn or stupid enough to run afoul of such rules qualifies for a Darwin Award.
But was the Death Penalty justified? In a time where survival was not only paramount, but practically the only consideration, yes it was. Think of it like this: Imagine a situation akin to the "Nuclear Option." There is someone who wants someone else dead, and the only way to stop them is to kill them. Due to circumstances of legality, putting them in jail is not an option at all. Then, what is a person to do? What sort of actions would be justified to save the life of the person who's been threatened?
In short, all God's actions were to protect His people. He had not only to deal with outsiders that threatened the Israelites (i.e. Egyptians, Amalekites, Moabites, Midianites, Canaanites, etc) in various ways, He also had to deal with internal problems of various individual Israelites going bad on Him.
Unthinkingly reflexive objectors do not see this. They insist that God is capricious and a bloodthirsty war god without taking into account that God was doing what was necessary to make sure that Israel survived as a people and a country.
They also do not see how merciful and patient God actually is. When they rage about the Firstborn in Egypt dropping dead as a result of God sending out the hitman known as the Angel of Death™, they completely ignore the fact that God gave Egypt 400 years to smarten up on their own. But it didn't happen, so He smartened them up for them. He smartened them up so well, that they never used slave labor for building the Pyramids. Ditto the Canaanites--that 400 years that Israel spent in Egypt was also a grace period for Canaan and its own wickedness. But they ended up getting worse too, as evidenced by their practice of child sacrifice and other things that were not nice. And they had word ahead too; the Spies that Israel sent to Jericho found out from Rahab that pretty much EVERYBODY knew what the God of Israel had done to the Egyptians, the Moabites, and everybody else in between. So it's not like this came as a complete surprise.
Israel, of course, didn't actually doooooo everything they were supposed to do. They left some Canaanites around and soon got hooked into their practices, like a kid being introduced to crack for the first time. And like a crack addict, Israel's society started deteriorating to the point of near self-destruction. This is what God wanted to avoid.
You know people are borderline insane (or outright fruitloops flapjacks kooky) when they invest a great deal of mental and physical energy objecting to something which they don't actually believe really happened. After all, how many Star Wars "geeks" get truly viscerally angry at Darth Vader for obliterating the planet Aldebaran with the Death Star in Star Wars IV? I mean really, REALLY angry? So much so that they go on massive polemics about how mean Darth Vader is, despite the fact that Darth Vader does not exist? And if they do, do you question their mental stability? Of course you do! Because that's craaaaazy.
Tuesday, May 27, 2008
Exploiting The Ambiguous Case™
AntiXtians LOOOOOOOOOOOVE to exploit The Ambiguous Case™. Take for example the idea that God actually endorsed child sacrifice, despite reams upon reams of passages condemning the practice. Not only that, but God Himself going so far as to say in Jeremiah 7:31 that HE had never commanded such a practice, let alone thought of it (or that it was a good idea!)
Yes, there is evidence that the Israelites sacrificed children. Dude, I'd be surprised if there WASN'T. After all, the Bible is FULL of instances where the Israelites turned away from God and started following Other Gods™--such as Baal/Ashtaroth, etc. However, the skeptics like to seize on the Old Testament requirement to "redeem" the Firstborn, and make it sound like they were to be sacrificed.
In light of all the other passages, such an interpretation makes 0 sense. God laid out DETAILED instructions on what to do how and where, and when it came to sacrifices, only specific clean things were permissible. HUMANS were NOT on that list. The major reason being? Humans are sinful and they're the ones that need redeeming! Sacrificing a human (imperfect, at that) to redeem a human is futility.com. (This is also why Jesus was an exception to the No Human Sacrifice Rule™, because Jesus was perfect and sinless).
Similar exploits of the Ambiguous Case by skeptics:
-Jepthah's Daughter (Judges). Sorry, people don't cry over never being married if they're going to die. They cry over never getting married if they're going to LIVE CELIBATE. see here: http://www.tektonics.org/gk/jepthah.html
-Wolves "evolved" into dogs, therefore microbes evolved into Man. That's a huge leap there, and they make it sound so simple, but in actuality the logistics of a single-celled organism giving rise (eventually) to everything from Arthropods to Vertebrates is quite staggering. Completely new genes had to have somehow poofed into existence. Evolutionists like to take the tack of replicated (doubled) genes, thus freeing up one gene to mutate into something "new." That only goes so far, not to mention all the various combinations that are made of EPIC FAIL (and thus instant death) that would have to be weeded through. You know, there's a reason there's something called Haldane's Dilemma...
-Genesis 1&2 allegedly contradict. Umm, no. Person is listening to noobs or people that think they know Hebrew. In any case, whoever it is never learned what Toledoth is. Genesis 2 is a recap of 1 and it's focusing mainly on Adam and Eve and the Garden of Eden--not Earth in general.
Genesis contradictions?
First published:Creation 18(4):44–45September 1996
Browse this issue
by Don Batten
Between the creation of Adam and the creation of Eve, the KJV/AV Bible says (Genesis 2:19) ‘out of the ground the LORD God formed every beast of the field, and every fowl of the air’. On the surface, this seems to say that the land beasts and birds were created between Adam and Eve. However, Jewish scholars apparently did not recognize any such conflict with the account in chapter 1, where Adam and Eve were both created after the beasts and birds (Genesis 1:23–25). Why is this? Because in Hebrew the precise tense of a verb is determined by the context. It is clear from chapter 1 that the beasts and birds were created before Adam, so Jewish scholars would have understood the verb ‘formed’ in Genesis 2:19 to mean ‘had formed’ or ‘having formed’. If we translate verse 19 as follows (as one widely used translation1 does), ‘Now the LORD God had formed out of the ground all the beasts of the field …’, the apparent disagreement with Genesis 1 disappears completely.
The question also stems from the wrong assumption that the second chapter of Genesis is just a different account of creation to that in chapter 1. It should be evident that chapter 2 is not just ‘another’ account of creation because chapter 2 says nothing about the creation of the heavens and the earth, the atmosphere, the seas, the land, the sun, the stars, the moon, the sea creatures, etc. Chapter 2 mentions only things directly relevant to the creation of Adam and Eve and their life in the garden God prepared specially for them. Chapter 1 may be understood as creation from God’s perspective; it is ‘the big picture’, an overview of the whole. Chapter 2 views the more important aspects from man’s perspective.
http://www.answersingenesis.org/creation/v18/i4/genesis.asp
-The whole business about "slavery" in the Bible and how God condones it--therefore he condones New World (black) slavery.
Well, "slavery-as-we-know-it" (i.e. that which occurred in the Western World, notably enslavement of African peoples, but not limited to such--the origin of the word "Slav" (Slovakians) means "slave.") is not the "slavery" of Ancient Times. The "slavery" encountered in the Bible specifically fell into two groups: those captured in war/sold by foreigners, and those who sold THEMSELVES (voluntary servitude). This was a survival mechanism, and God Himself forbade the capture of a fellow Israelite for selling into slavery--in fact imposing the death penalty for such (Deut 24:7 If a man be found stealing any of his brethren of the children of Israel, and maketh merchandise of him, or selleth him; then that thief shall die; and thou shalt put evil away from among you.) Apparently this isn't even good enough for SAB (Skeptic's Annotated Bible), as the dude marks this as "injustice". Umm, WTH? No pleasing you is there?
-murder-death-kill
All Demolition Man kidding aside, Skeptics seem to have a problem with context when it comes to whether "Thou Shalt not Kill" means "murder" or is more broad. It certainly can't extend to all killing, logically speaking. For the most part, it's logical that the word (ratsah) means unjustifiable killing. Most Jewish scholars hold that in the context of the commandment, this is pretty much what ratsah means. There are other places that ratsah is used which does not refer to murder. But this is like complaining about the definition of the word "is." It all depends on the context. The true "kill" word (all-encompassing meaning) in Hebrew is harag, however. The elasticity of the term ratsah, however, can apply to someone merely wishing death upon another person. In any case, it is clear that any killing of human beings is to be avoided where possible. Manslaughter is not murder, but the commandment seems to indicate then that actions should be taken to prevent accidental death of another person. After all, God gave instructions on how to make roofs safer to make sure people don't accidentally fall off them and break their neck.
There are more instances of Exploiting the Ambiguous Case™, many many more...
Yes, there is evidence that the Israelites sacrificed children. Dude, I'd be surprised if there WASN'T. After all, the Bible is FULL of instances where the Israelites turned away from God and started following Other Gods™--such as Baal/Ashtaroth, etc. However, the skeptics like to seize on the Old Testament requirement to "redeem" the Firstborn, and make it sound like they were to be sacrificed.
In light of all the other passages, such an interpretation makes 0 sense. God laid out DETAILED instructions on what to do how and where, and when it came to sacrifices, only specific clean things were permissible. HUMANS were NOT on that list. The major reason being? Humans are sinful and they're the ones that need redeeming! Sacrificing a human (imperfect, at that) to redeem a human is futility.com. (This is also why Jesus was an exception to the No Human Sacrifice Rule™, because Jesus was perfect and sinless).
Similar exploits of the Ambiguous Case by skeptics:
-Jepthah's Daughter (Judges). Sorry, people don't cry over never being married if they're going to die. They cry over never getting married if they're going to LIVE CELIBATE. see here: http://www.tektonics.org/gk/jepthah.html
-Wolves "evolved" into dogs, therefore microbes evolved into Man. That's a huge leap there, and they make it sound so simple, but in actuality the logistics of a single-celled organism giving rise (eventually) to everything from Arthropods to Vertebrates is quite staggering. Completely new genes had to have somehow poofed into existence. Evolutionists like to take the tack of replicated (doubled) genes, thus freeing up one gene to mutate into something "new." That only goes so far, not to mention all the various combinations that are made of EPIC FAIL (and thus instant death) that would have to be weeded through. You know, there's a reason there's something called Haldane's Dilemma...
-Genesis 1&2 allegedly contradict. Umm, no. Person is listening to noobs or people that think they know Hebrew. In any case, whoever it is never learned what Toledoth is. Genesis 2 is a recap of 1 and it's focusing mainly on Adam and Eve and the Garden of Eden--not Earth in general.
Genesis contradictions?
First published:Creation 18(4):44–45September 1996
Browse this issue
by Don Batten
Between the creation of Adam and the creation of Eve, the KJV/AV Bible says (Genesis 2:19) ‘out of the ground the LORD God formed every beast of the field, and every fowl of the air’. On the surface, this seems to say that the land beasts and birds were created between Adam and Eve. However, Jewish scholars apparently did not recognize any such conflict with the account in chapter 1, where Adam and Eve were both created after the beasts and birds (Genesis 1:23–25). Why is this? Because in Hebrew the precise tense of a verb is determined by the context. It is clear from chapter 1 that the beasts and birds were created before Adam, so Jewish scholars would have understood the verb ‘formed’ in Genesis 2:19 to mean ‘had formed’ or ‘having formed’. If we translate verse 19 as follows (as one widely used translation1 does), ‘Now the LORD God had formed out of the ground all the beasts of the field …’, the apparent disagreement with Genesis 1 disappears completely.
The question also stems from the wrong assumption that the second chapter of Genesis is just a different account of creation to that in chapter 1. It should be evident that chapter 2 is not just ‘another’ account of creation because chapter 2 says nothing about the creation of the heavens and the earth, the atmosphere, the seas, the land, the sun, the stars, the moon, the sea creatures, etc. Chapter 2 mentions only things directly relevant to the creation of Adam and Eve and their life in the garden God prepared specially for them. Chapter 1 may be understood as creation from God’s perspective; it is ‘the big picture’, an overview of the whole. Chapter 2 views the more important aspects from man’s perspective.
http://www.answersingenesis.org/creation/v18/i4/genesis.asp
-The whole business about "slavery" in the Bible and how God condones it--therefore he condones New World (black) slavery.
Well, "slavery-as-we-know-it" (i.e. that which occurred in the Western World, notably enslavement of African peoples, but not limited to such--the origin of the word "Slav" (Slovakians) means "slave.") is not the "slavery" of Ancient Times. The "slavery" encountered in the Bible specifically fell into two groups: those captured in war/sold by foreigners, and those who sold THEMSELVES (voluntary servitude). This was a survival mechanism, and God Himself forbade the capture of a fellow Israelite for selling into slavery--in fact imposing the death penalty for such (Deut 24:7 If a man be found stealing any of his brethren of the children of Israel, and maketh merchandise of him, or selleth him; then that thief shall die; and thou shalt put evil away from among you.) Apparently this isn't even good enough for SAB (Skeptic's Annotated Bible), as the dude marks this as "injustice". Umm, WTH? No pleasing you is there?
-murder-death-kill
All Demolition Man kidding aside, Skeptics seem to have a problem with context when it comes to whether "Thou Shalt not Kill" means "murder" or is more broad. It certainly can't extend to all killing, logically speaking. For the most part, it's logical that the word (ratsah) means unjustifiable killing. Most Jewish scholars hold that in the context of the commandment, this is pretty much what ratsah means. There are other places that ratsah is used which does not refer to murder. But this is like complaining about the definition of the word "is." It all depends on the context. The true "kill" word (all-encompassing meaning) in Hebrew is harag, however. The elasticity of the term ratsah, however, can apply to someone merely wishing death upon another person. In any case, it is clear that any killing of human beings is to be avoided where possible. Manslaughter is not murder, but the commandment seems to indicate then that actions should be taken to prevent accidental death of another person. After all, God gave instructions on how to make roofs safer to make sure people don't accidentally fall off them and break their neck.
There are more instances of Exploiting the Ambiguous Case™, many many more...
Monday, May 12, 2008
Refuting a bucket of s*** with legal arguments
I happened upon this little gem recently:
http://saintgasoline.com/2007/12/01/refuting-creationists-with-only-a-bucket-of-feces/#comment-31802 (language warning for those with delicate sensibilities, but nothing worse than the excrement-word).
For those of you who are too lazy to click or are afraid of malware popping up from viewing that, it depicts two people, one of whom is covered in excrement and his standing near a bucket of excrement that is empty but is labelled "s***". Guy sans s*** is all "so you're the one that threw s*** on my house" and the other guy says, "But it was never directly observed!"
You're damn straight it was never directly observed. Of course, this is intended to "illustrate" that something can be proven without being directly observed.
However, legal jurisprudence would take issue with this oversimplification. While clever, it may also not be correct. How, for example, is Person #1 to know that Person #2 did not, in fact, throw s*** on the house, but rather caught the perpetrators, wrestled the bucket away, and in the process got covered in s***? So while it may be "safe" to assume that guy with the bucket did the dirty deed, it is rather simpleminded to exclude all other possibilities--especially perfectly plausible ones. It certainly doesn't lend itself to irrefutable proof.
For instance how would you be able to tell the difference upon first sight, of a guy that threw a bucket of s*** on your house, and a guy who wrestled a bucket of s*** from some punks who were in the process of throwing s*** on your house? Or he found the bucket later after walking under the guy's eaves and a big load of s*** just rolled off the roof and fell on his head? Answer: you wouldn't.
http://saintgasoline.com/2007/12/01/refuting-creationists-with-only-a-bucket-of-feces/#comment-31802 (language warning for those with delicate sensibilities, but nothing worse than the excrement-word).
For those of you who are too lazy to click or are afraid of malware popping up from viewing that, it depicts two people, one of whom is covered in excrement and his standing near a bucket of excrement that is empty but is labelled "s***". Guy sans s*** is all "so you're the one that threw s*** on my house" and the other guy says, "But it was never directly observed!"
You're damn straight it was never directly observed. Of course, this is intended to "illustrate" that something can be proven without being directly observed.
However, legal jurisprudence would take issue with this oversimplification. While clever, it may also not be correct. How, for example, is Person #1 to know that Person #2 did not, in fact, throw s*** on the house, but rather caught the perpetrators, wrestled the bucket away, and in the process got covered in s***? So while it may be "safe" to assume that guy with the bucket did the dirty deed, it is rather simpleminded to exclude all other possibilities--especially perfectly plausible ones. It certainly doesn't lend itself to irrefutable proof.
For instance how would you be able to tell the difference upon first sight, of a guy that threw a bucket of s*** on your house, and a guy who wrestled a bucket of s*** from some punks who were in the process of throwing s*** on your house? Or he found the bucket later after walking under the guy's eaves and a big load of s*** just rolled off the roof and fell on his head? Answer: you wouldn't.
It's the Abiogenesis, stupid.
AntiXtians (atheists, agnostics, and various others) love to go on about how they can prove that they're more likely to be right based on "science." Of course they point to "evolution" primarily, and you'll never see a greater usage of the bait-and-switch tactic than during a debate with an evolutionist, regardless of stripe (religious or not).
Never mind that the evidence for "evolution" being responsible for more than just dogs with different color coats, but rather for amoebas turning into people is ambiguous at best and relies as much on interpretation of evidence as on the evidence itself. It would be like finding a person holding a knife standing over a murder victim and proclaiming the person guilty on that basis alone, when if one looked harder they'd find another person's blood and fingerprints on the knife as well and it just turns out that the person they caught actually only discovered the body and had just pulled the knife out of dude's chest.
Whatever arguments and counterarguments are put up, they all essentially boil down to one basic argument: what is actually possible? Creationists and IDers (which aren't the same, incidentally, some IDers are actually panspermia-believers in the alien-seeding sense) believe that it's simply not possible for the kinds of required mutations to have arisen even in the time asked for by evolutionists in order to make a single-celled organism into a multicellular vertebrate.
But gone mostly ignored in the debate is the horse before this evolutionary cart: How did Life begin? Evolutionists who don't subscribe to any religion are adamant that it arose on its own ("abiogenesis"). Evolutionists who happen to be religious may also theorize this, but some don't. However, just how possible IS abiogenesis?
Well, if you've ever had any training in chemistry, you'll be aware of a phenomenon called "hydrolization" where water breaks down molecules into smaller components. Proteins are water-soluble and it is directly observable science that water + time = GG for many molecules, including chains of amino acids.
One of the main building blocks of life is the amino acid cytosine. (To those of you who took Biology and Genetics, you'll recognize it as one of the five main base pairs.) Without it, there can't be DNA. Cytosine has never been found in spark discharge experiments. They haven't even found it in meteorites. Biochemist (and evolutionist) Robert Shapiro comments that either Cytosine is very hard to manufacture, or it breaks down before detection. Attempts to manufacture cytosine have resulted in experiments that use different theorized atmospheric mixtures that not only go wildly contrary to what scientists think the early earth was like, but is a highly improbable scenario of what it was like back then. (I'm sorry but trying to pretend there was a Nitrogen-Methane-dominant atmosphere? NOBODY thinks that!) And even then the cyanoacetylene that is supposed to help make cytosine tended instead to hydrolize and thus destroy any chances of making cytosine.
And if that weren't enough, cytosine is highly unstable and breaks down very rapidly on its own. Forget all those "hot" scenarios you entertained, like by the hot deep sea thermal vents. Your precious cytosine--assuming it even formed, rather than its components breaking down even further due to HOT WATER--would get nuked into Uracil before you could blink. Even at cold temperatures, it breaks down too rapidly for it to be able to do anything in the vast periods of time that are indicated. If your theory has water in it, it's boned. But if it doesn't have water in it, it's boned too! Such a conundrum!
So while non-theistic Evolutionists wax nearly poetic (and satiric) about how Creationism or ID is a great big fairy tale, they're ignoring the enormous myth in their own ideological backyard. And the ironic part...is they're ignoring clear scientific evidence that they are wrong!
Nothing is more telling than Shapiro's own admission here:
‘Some future day may yet arrive when all reasonable chemical experiments run to discover a probable origin of life have failed unequivocally. Further, new geological evidence may yet indicate a sudden appearance of life on the earth. Finally, we may have explored the universe and found no trace of life, or processes leading to life, elsewhere. Some scientists might choose to turn to religion for an answer. Others, however, myself included, would attempt to sort out the surviving less probable scientific explanations in the hope of selecting one that was still more likely than the remainder.’
Yeah, some people will always believe in fairy tales...and moreso if they're under the blanket of "science"...now it just remains as to which "fairy tale" is right. And in my opinion, any "fairy tale" scenario of Life beginning has to have a being with MORE intelligence than the scientists running these experiments.
references here http://www.trueorigin.org/originoflife.asp
Never mind that the evidence for "evolution" being responsible for more than just dogs with different color coats, but rather for amoebas turning into people is ambiguous at best and relies as much on interpretation of evidence as on the evidence itself. It would be like finding a person holding a knife standing over a murder victim and proclaiming the person guilty on that basis alone, when if one looked harder they'd find another person's blood and fingerprints on the knife as well and it just turns out that the person they caught actually only discovered the body and had just pulled the knife out of dude's chest.
Whatever arguments and counterarguments are put up, they all essentially boil down to one basic argument: what is actually possible? Creationists and IDers (which aren't the same, incidentally, some IDers are actually panspermia-believers in the alien-seeding sense) believe that it's simply not possible for the kinds of required mutations to have arisen even in the time asked for by evolutionists in order to make a single-celled organism into a multicellular vertebrate.
But gone mostly ignored in the debate is the horse before this evolutionary cart: How did Life begin? Evolutionists who don't subscribe to any religion are adamant that it arose on its own ("abiogenesis"). Evolutionists who happen to be religious may also theorize this, but some don't. However, just how possible IS abiogenesis?
Well, if you've ever had any training in chemistry, you'll be aware of a phenomenon called "hydrolization" where water breaks down molecules into smaller components. Proteins are water-soluble and it is directly observable science that water + time = GG for many molecules, including chains of amino acids.
One of the main building blocks of life is the amino acid cytosine. (To those of you who took Biology and Genetics, you'll recognize it as one of the five main base pairs.) Without it, there can't be DNA. Cytosine has never been found in spark discharge experiments. They haven't even found it in meteorites. Biochemist (and evolutionist) Robert Shapiro comments that either Cytosine is very hard to manufacture, or it breaks down before detection. Attempts to manufacture cytosine have resulted in experiments that use different theorized atmospheric mixtures that not only go wildly contrary to what scientists think the early earth was like, but is a highly improbable scenario of what it was like back then. (I'm sorry but trying to pretend there was a Nitrogen-Methane-dominant atmosphere? NOBODY thinks that!) And even then the cyanoacetylene that is supposed to help make cytosine tended instead to hydrolize and thus destroy any chances of making cytosine.
And if that weren't enough, cytosine is highly unstable and breaks down very rapidly on its own. Forget all those "hot" scenarios you entertained, like by the hot deep sea thermal vents. Your precious cytosine--assuming it even formed, rather than its components breaking down even further due to HOT WATER--would get nuked into Uracil before you could blink. Even at cold temperatures, it breaks down too rapidly for it to be able to do anything in the vast periods of time that are indicated. If your theory has water in it, it's boned. But if it doesn't have water in it, it's boned too! Such a conundrum!
So while non-theistic Evolutionists wax nearly poetic (and satiric) about how Creationism or ID is a great big fairy tale, they're ignoring the enormous myth in their own ideological backyard. And the ironic part...is they're ignoring clear scientific evidence that they are wrong!
Nothing is more telling than Shapiro's own admission here:
‘Some future day may yet arrive when all reasonable chemical experiments run to discover a probable origin of life have failed unequivocally. Further, new geological evidence may yet indicate a sudden appearance of life on the earth. Finally, we may have explored the universe and found no trace of life, or processes leading to life, elsewhere. Some scientists might choose to turn to religion for an answer. Others, however, myself included, would attempt to sort out the surviving less probable scientific explanations in the hope of selecting one that was still more likely than the remainder.’
Yeah, some people will always believe in fairy tales...and moreso if they're under the blanket of "science"...now it just remains as to which "fairy tale" is right. And in my opinion, any "fairy tale" scenario of Life beginning has to have a being with MORE intelligence than the scientists running these experiments.
references here http://www.trueorigin.org/originoflife.asp
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