Re: Dembski and Nelson at MIT and Tufts
Massie (mrlab@ix.netcom.com)
Tue, 06 Apr 1999 08:33:13 -0700
Kevin O'Brien wrote:
>
> >How else can we recompense those who would have performed the greatest
> >experiment ever?
> >
>
> No one ever won a Nobel Prize for "discovering" that enzymes were catalysts
> either, yet this concept is so basic and fundamentally important to
> biochemistry that if it were ever proven to be false, the whole of modern
> biochemistry would collapse and we would have to start from scratch. There
> are many such concepts in science for which no one ever won a Nobel Prize,
> because the concept was not proven by a single person or group of persons
> doing a single critical experiment, but was proven by a great deal of
> research done over a span of time. These concepts are accepted by concensus
> based on this research, and Nobel Prizes are not awarded for reaching a
> concensus.
>
> The realization that life has been made in the lab is a concensus based on a
> large amount of research that stretches back at least four decades. Yet
> even as early as 1970 biochemists like Lehninger had recognized that life in
> the form of primitive cells that could metabolize and reproduce, even
> evolve, had been made in the lab from simpler chemicals. The modern
> concensus is that this is still true.
>
> If you want to learn more, then stop being so stubbornly ignorant and read
> the scientific literature.
>
> Kevin L. O'Brien
*************************
Kevin
Civility can be a pathway to greatness.
I read the scientific literature and the Good Book every day.
I know many die-hard evolutionist who do not believe that life has been
generated in the laboratory from inaminate materials. I recently read
an excellent book written by a very staunch anti-creationist on the
geological and life history of the earth. The book is not handy but to
paraphrase he said that "The origin of life is a great and frustrating
mystery." I will see if I can lay my hands on it tonight and post it.
Now you owe us a backup to your assertions. Perhaps instead of
appealing to claims that we are uninformed and illiterate you could give
us citations to the technical literature where carbon and a host of
other compounds were sealed in a sterile chamber and out came a living
reproducing entity of some sort.
Bert Massie