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>>>Paul Robson: ...
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Question:
Theist, what is 2+2 ?
Theist:
I'm glad you asked me that. Notwithstanding the implicit closed
mindedness, I feel that the question does have an a priori implication
of the inerrancy of numbers. Therefore, I feel that this allows me to
support my claim by such methods.
Question:
Well, what is 2+2 ?
Theist:
I answered your question in my previous post. However, I feel that
your statement is an implicit accusation of error ?
Question:
Can you tell me what 2+2 is ?
Theist:
I answered that in 27 previous posts.
Question:
Well what the ***** is 2+2 you ***** ? Answer the question ?
Theist:
Well, I answered your question. You obviously can't win the
argument any other way.
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DNAunion: I thought I would take a look at a hypothetical exchange from the
other point of view. And I stuck to something more concrete, instead of a
ludicrous example of theist's not being able to do first-grade math.
IDist: How did life originate on Earth?
Evolutionist: It’s quite simple, and every step has been
experimentally validated. As Stanley Miller showed, lightning in the early
atmosphere produced amino acids. Sidney Fox then showed that if heated,
amino acids will bond together to form proteins: this could have happened on
the rim of a volcano. If these are then washed away – say by rain
– they form microspheres: that is, protocells that can grow,
metabolize, bud like yeasts, and reproduce: Fox said that he created life.
These facts can be found in many high school or college texts.
IDist: But didn’t Fox exaggerate the properties of his proteinoid
microspheres?
Evolutionist: Well, some have said that.
IDist: Isn’t it true that his microspheres grow from the outside, by
the mere accreting of material, and not by producing it themselves: in fact,
isn’t true that protein microspheres cannot even produce proteinoid but
must be bathed in supply furnished by researchers?
Evolutionist: Well, yes.
IDist: And isn’t true that the so-called budding is also not like that
of yeasts: for example, proteinoid microspheres do not have microtubules
which play a major role in the budding of yeasts, nor do they contain or
partition out DNA as budding yeasts do. Isn’t it also true that they
split in two in a fashion similar to soap bubbles - when they accumulate
enough material to cause surface tension to be too great: isn’t this
what Fox called reproduction and fission?
Evolutionist: Well, okay, yes, that is all true.
IDist: And didn’t many of his other claims go far beyond the actual
data?
Evolutionist: I would have to admit that, yes.
IDist: Going back further in your statement, isn’t it true that
Fox’s proteins were not really proteins?
Evolutionist: Well, yes, he actually called them proteinoid instead protein.
IDist: Was this word choice made because unlike proteins, his proteinoids
contained both the left and right handed amino acids, were assembled in
random sequences, and were not linear?
Evolutionist: All three are correct.
IDist: Going back further in your statement, isn’t it true that
Stanley Miller’s experiment did not model the prebiotic atmosphere
accurately?
Evolutionist: Well, okay, yes. Most atmospheric scientists now consider the
prebiotic atmosphere not to have been highly-reduced.
IDist: And when Miller and others tried electric-discharge experiments using
the accepted composition, what occurred?
Evolutionist: Well, uhm, the results were virtually nill.
IDist: So when you said “It’s quite simple, and every step has
been experimentally validated”, you were wrong?
Evolutionist: Well, I was just giving you some kind of a conceptual idea of
what might or could happen. Besides, the RNA World explains the origin of
life, and numerous researchers and numerous experiments validate it.
IDist: The central molecule of the RNA World hypothesis is a
self-replicating RNA molecule. Have any RNA experiments ever produced a
self-replicating RNA molecule?
Evolutionist: Well, no. But most people in the field hope that they will
succeed someday.
IDist: Is RNA itself even a prebiotically-plausible molecule?
Evolutionist: Well, not really.
IDist: Has any prebiotic experiment produced RNA from its building blocks?
Evolutionist: I would have to admit that they have not.
IDist: And don’t the different components require different
conditions: sugars needing different conditions to form than do bases, and
the purine and pyrimidine bases themselves also requiring different
conditions?
Evolutionist: Yes. It adds another hurdle to overcome: how were they
produced under separate conditions and then brought together to react? But
there are ways to imagine this hurdle being overcome.
IDist: So a true RNA World hypotheses also falls short.
Evolutionist: Well, yeah, I suppose. But now they think that some other
simpler molecule – like PNA - started replicating before RNA, and led
to the RNA World.
IDist: And is PNA a prebiotically-plausible molecule?
Evolutionist: Well, no one has yet produced a PNA molecule under prebiotic
conditions.
IDist: And doesn’t PNA, like RNA, suffer from enantiomeric cross
inhibition?
Evolutionist: Well, yes. I guess homochirality would still have to have
happened first.
IDist: So how did homochirality occur?
Evolutionist: No one knows. But since life originated on Earth naturally,
and homochirality is needed for life to exist, then we know that
homochirality occurred naturally. It’s really quite simple.
IDist: So when you said, “the RNA World explains the origin of life,
and numerous researchers and numerous experiments validate it”, were
you wrong again?
Evolutionist: Well, yeah. But I was just giving you another overview of
what might or could happen. And you need to understand that it is now
believed by many that metabolism came before proteins and RNA, and that
solves the problems you brought up.
IDist: So experiments have shown that long, sustained, closed metabolic
cycles can form from a prebiotic soup?
Evolutionist: Well, no. But many people hope to show this sometime in the
future.
IDist: Is there any empirical evidence that indicates such a metabolism can
exist without being guided by genetic information?
Evolutionist: Well, no.
IDist: And didn’t Leslie Orgel, a leader in origin of life studies,
say he believes not only is there no reason to believe that such a metabolism
could form without genetic information, but that there is also every reason
to believe that it could not?
Evolutionist: Well, yeah, but what does he know.
IDist: So when you said, “metabolism came before proteins and RNA, and
that solves the problems you brought up.”, you were probably wrong
again?
Evolutionist: Well, I guess you could say that. But only time will tell. I
hold out hope that one day, some new and surprising finding will fill in the
gaps. Besides, there are other possibilities other than metabolism first -
haven't you heard that proteins could have formed and started replicating?
IDist: Okay, I will ask again: How did life originate on Earth?
Evolutionist: I already explained it to you. If you weren’t such an
ignorant religious fundamentalist you would not have so distorted the facts
to fit your preconceived ideologies and become totally blind to the empirical
facts of science in the process. It is useless having a discussion with
someone as close minded and prejudiced as you - all you Creaionists are alike.
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Wed Nov 22 2000 - 12:21:18 EST