| Author | Message | ||
     Sifo |
Sdave, I see you are still going on about those who ignore science. I'll repeat my challenge once again to discuss part of the origins of life issue on a purely scientific basis... Scientific theories typically predict things. This is one of the ways that we can look at a theory and see if it really makes sense. Gravity for instance predicts that objects in space will orbit each other. If objects in space behaved differently than our theory predicts, then there is almost certainly a problem with the theory. So when it comes to the theory that the origin of life comes from random events, i.e., chance, that theory will make predictions. One of those predictions is that the information contained in DNA was assembled by chance, until it just happened upon a combination that could replicate and become life as we know it. We know that there is a very large amount of information contained in the simplest of DNA strands. It is enormously complex. We know that the information contained in DNA is unique, i.e., it isn't repetitive in nature such as fractals. We also know that it is useful information, i.e., it serves a purpose, to produce a life form. Now it's certainly conceivable that chance can produce a large quantity of information. It's also conceivable that chance can produce unique information. It's even conceivable that chance can produce useful or purposeful information. Combining all three takes a whole lot of chance though. Assuming it were even possible to have chance assemble the needed information to produce a simple life form, certainly mixed in with that large amount of unique and useful information will be a huge amount of random garbage included. That is the nature of chance happenings. What we have learned studying DNA is that there is very little useless information. In fact most of what we used to think was useless information has been found to have purposes that weren't initially realized. That trend of identifying the purpose of various parts of DNA strings continues. DNA seems to have very little if any useless information. What's more is that science typically will look for examples to point to that are similar in nature to what is being hypothesized as support for the fact that what is being proposed is know to happen similarly in other areas of nature. I'm unaware of nature ever producing large amounts of unique and useful, purposeful information that could possibly parallel what we are talking about with DNA. That leads us to believe that nature producing DNA is not typical of what nature normally does. There is however a known source of large amounts of unique, useful, purposeful information that exits in the universe. That is a parallel that scientific method should demand that we explore. That source of known large amounts of unique, useful purposeful information is of course an intelligent designer. Here we can see countless examples where intelligent designers have compiled information of all sorts, including the motorcycles we ride. So the question is: Does the large amount of unique, useful, purposeful information seen in DNA support the scientific theory of chance or intelligent design? | ||
| 2734 |
>>>>>>There was once a BW member who regularly railed against religion and stated that it was a crutch for weak people. His personal poop hit the fan and we haven't seen or heard from him. I often wonder if a "crutch" might not have helped him.<<<<< That's all you can do is wonder.... because you cant prove anything else. Im not railing against religion, I'm railing against how it's supposedly proved. In fact I have yet to express my faith or lack of it. (Message edited by 2734 on September 16, 2011) | ||
| Superdavetfft |
Sifo, sorry I'll get to your DNA thing later, looks interesting, have to do SOME work today though... | ||
| Dannyd |
I will say that I am not a religious man but I am spiritual. I truly believe that we are just a speck in this whole grand scheme of things and that there definately is something greater than us that is in control of it all. If we continue to piss "it" off we are not going to be much longer for this world. I believe that is why we see diseases such as AIDS help to control population outbursts in places like Africa. Now we are starting to beat AIDS so let's just give the same area a drought and war. The "it" to me is the universe itself. It will protect itself from humans doing too much harm. If we get out of control it will unleash disease, famine, war, etc to keep us in our place. I do not buy into the Christian theory that we are made in Gods image. I think that is putting way too much importance in ourselves and the bible has been revised so many times through the years that it is humans interpretation of the truth. Image can mean a lot of things also. Perhaps a better word would be we were made with Gods values instilled in us? In other words morality? I don't know, just a thought. | ||
| Blake |
the bible has been revised so many times through the years that it is humans interpretation of the truth. That is untrue. We still have an extensive collection of ancient scripture. What we do have is a BUNCH of different translations of that ancient scripture, but the ancient scripture is still available. I think your understanding of what "in god's image" truly means is on target. | ||
| Dannyd |
I have to say Blake, to see you and I agreeing on so much is very refreshing!!  Have you watched that show about the lost stories of the bible ever? So many parts of the old bibles that have been left out of what we have now. Amazing how different folks in charge have decided that they did not feel such and such was important or made their cause look bad. (Message edited by dannyd on September 16, 2011) | ||
| Blake |
Richard (2734), If you would like to make a point then please do so on your own. Mis-stating Dave's purple dragon "how would you prove it's not here" challenge and my answer to it isn't something I'm interested in discussing further. If your point is that a photo of something is pretty good evidence for its existence, well gee, I agree with that. I don't see where the issue of trying to prove any particular religion has been breached here as you seem to assert. It appears that you've generated a straw-man argument re "proving religion". Congratulations, you've won it too. Warning: You've activated the BadWeB anti-troll radar due to way too many distortions and attempts at misdirections with little to no substantive contributions. Please remedy that. | ||
| 2734 |
It's your sandbox it appears | ||
| Ezblast |
Blake thats wild, she must have figured out something to hit four times, especially considering she's a statistics professor. EZ | ||
| Ft_bstrd |
Amazing how different folks in charge have decided that they did not feel such and such was important or made their cause look bad. The bible was pared to the 66 books that it is because the outlying books (Apocryphal books), while interesting, contained stories that could not be corroborated by the other books. If Saint Bobo wrote a book that described a pink elephant that ran through the scene of the crucifixion and that event wasn't corroborated by ANY of the other books, it was left out. The goal was to try to condense the bible down to only those books that were consistent and true to the narrative of events. While there are hundreds of translations of the bible, they are not sequential translations or serial translations, one upon the other. EACH has gone back to the original greek and hebrew texts rather than relying on later translations. What was most interesting of translations of the original scrolls was the meticulous way in which the scrolls were translated. The transcriber would hand copy a section of a scroll. A second transcriber would check the translation. First they would count the number of characters on the page. If there was even one character more or less than the original, the entire page was burned. Next the transcriber would check to see that there was the same number of characters in each line. If a single line was off, they would burn the page. Next, they would check character by character. The original texts and those later scrolls that were taken from the original texts are some of the most precise and accurate writings in history. | ||
| Blake |
Dan, If you are talking about the gnostic gospels like the gospels of Thomas, Judas, Mary Magdalene, etc--I think there are something like 52 or more of them-- then like soooo many folks you've been misled by some very dishonest deceivers. Those writings do exist, but they are blatant forgeries, written in the 2nd and 3rd centuries long after the New Testament gospels (all written in the first century and relying on first person accounts of what they report). The fraudulent gnostic gospels were created by a sect of folks who were trying to generate their own version of religion by highjacking Christianity and twisting it into what they called gnosticism. The Gnostic gospels are writings by early "Christian" Gnostics. After the first century of Christianity, two primary divisions developed - the orthodox and the Gnostics. The orthodox Christians held to books we now have in the Bible and to what is today considered orthodox theology. The Gnostic Christians, if they can truly be described as Christians, held a distinctly different view of the Bible, of Jesus Christ, of salvation, and of virtually every other major Christian doctrine. However, they did not have any writings by the Apostles to give legitimacy to their beliefs. Deceivers try to convince us that those fraudulent writings are the real truth. They have no standing in credible scholarship or study of history. They are akin to someone today making up their own fraudulent version of letters, diaries, and articles from America's founders in order to help further their own political agenda. Dan Rather took a shot at such a scheme aimed at George W. Bush. LOL | ||
| Dannyd |
that is interesting Ft bstrd. Sure was not the impression I got for why they were left out after watching those shows. | ||
| Ezblast |
Like any of the Bushes where fountains of truth - lol EZ | ||
| Dannyd |
that makes perfect sense Blake. While I am not a Christian I have no issues with anybody who is unless they try to push their beliefs onto me. Respect me and I will respect you is how I see it. And I am always willing to listen if you are willing to accept my views are different than yours. | ||
| Tankhead |
So wiki is laughable but this website is more valid. http://www.gotquestions.org/Gnostic-gospels.html No offense Blake but I disagree and find it just as laughable. But that is OK. If you believe it good for you. We will always disagree. See, no personal attacks. It's all good. Who wrote the article that you listed? It does not list it AFAIK. Maybe I missed it? (Message edited by tankhead on September 16, 2011) | ||
| Ft_bstrd |
Dannyd, Here are a couple of other points of thought: OVERWHELMING NEW TESTAMENT MANUSCRIPT EVIDENCE The New Testament has far more manuscript evidence than any other ancient work. There are more than 24,000 manuscript copies of the New Testament, with only a 25 year time span between the original and the manuscript copies. The Iliad ranks next -- it has 643 manuscript copies with a 500 year time span between the original and the copies. Only 40 lines (400 words) of the New Testament are in doubt between the 24,000 manuscript copies, compared to 746 lines in doubt of the Iliad's 643 copies. This translates to 5% of the Iliad's text being corrupted, compared to 1/2 of 1% for the New Testament. These New Testament errors consist primarily of misspellings and duplications and affect no fundamental doctrines. To quote Sir Frederic Kenyon, an authority in the field of New Testament textual criticism: "It cannot be too strongly asserted that in substance the text of the Bible is certain... The number of manuscripts of the New Testament, of early translations from it, and of quotations from it in the oldest writers of the Church, is so large that it is practically certain that the true reading of every doubtful passage is preserved in some one or other of these ancient authorities. This can be said of no other book in the world. Scholars are satisfied that they possess substantially the true text of the principal Greek and Roman writers whose works have come down to us... yet our knowledge of their writings depends on a mere handful of manuscripts, whereas the manuscripts of the New Testament are counted by hundreds, and even thousands." RIGOROUS TRANSCRIPTION OF OLD TESTAMENT We can have confidence in the reliability of the Old Testament because of the rigorous transcription methods employed. Before the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls in 1947, the oldest Old Testament manuscript found dated around AD 900, approximately 1300 years after the completion of the Old Testament in 400 BC. The Dead Sea Scrolls, however are dated before the time of Christ (about 150 BC). The book of Isaiah found in the Dead Sea Scrolls verifies the precision of the method used to transcribe the Old Testament. The book of Isaiah from the Dead Sea Scrolls is identical to today's standard Hebrew Bible in greater than 95% of the text. The 5% variation is due to slips of the pen and variations in spelling. The Talmudists (AD 100 - 500) used a very strict transcription method. Synagogue rolls had to be written on specially prepared skins of clean animals and fastened with strings taken from clean animals. Each skin had to contain a certain number of columns. Each column had to have between 48 and 60 lines and be 30 letters wide. The spacing between consonants, sections and books was precise, measured by hairs or threads. The ink had to be black and prepared with a specific recipe. The transcriber could not deviate from the original in any manner. No words could be written from memory. The person making the copy had to wash his whole body before beginning and had to be in full Jewish dress. He could not begin to write the name of God with a pen freshly dipped in ink. While writing God's name, he was to focus on his task, not even looking up if a king addressed him. Because of the care taken to make copies, Talmudists were confident that they were exact. Talmudists destroyed older copies because they feared the older copies would become damaged and misinterpreted with age. That is why there are few older manuscripts. The Massoretes (AD 500-900) also had a complicated system of ensuring that copies were accurate. By numbering verses, words and letters and calculating and enumerating various combinations, they were able to ensure precise transcription of the text. We also be assured of the validity of the Old Testament because Jesus accepted it and quoted extensively from it. | ||
| Blake |
Christopher, I don't know about the website as a whole. I am familiar with the issue of the gnostic gospels and what that web page reports is accurate. I'm not promoting the site and I'm not using it to educate myself. I was simply looking for a good source for what I already understand so that Dan could see it too. You think there is an error in that explanation I'd love to hear it along with some credible supporting evidence of course. Cut out the useless trolling and digressing please, stick to the actual substantive discussion. Is that something that you think you can do? If you want to start a separate topic about the integrity of wikipedia and other web info site, please do. | ||
| Tankhead |
Blake, you call me Chris, if you would like. I was merely pointing out that you laugh at me for using the internet as a means for giving information and then post a internet site to read. No big. But (I mean this sincerely) I am interested in who the author is if you would please find out because I would like to check more of him/her out. Now, this has left a bad taste in my mouth. Sure this the internet and blah blah blah, but theses things are as important to me as they are for you. I have stated, I have NEVER posted in one of these threads on here in my five + years. I am hoping that you will agree respectfully that we can agree to disagree. I am not going to post on these threads anymore. This is your site and I thank you for that. It is a great site. I will continue to stay on Big Bad and Dirty, where I mostly hang out. I guess what I am saying is (for me) this has been a learning experience these last couple of days. I realize that it really is pointless to try and have people learn new things unless they are willing (please let me know the author I am interested). I wish you a good weekend. Hopefully you can get to ride, we are having great crisp weather here in NJ, and I just wish you no ill, and hope that if we ever meet we can just carry on like two dudes that just accept our differences. Good Luck, sorry if I have offended you. Be safe on your Buell. Chris (Message edited by tankhead on September 16, 2011) | ||
| Dannyd |
Good stuff. Not convinced of everything you guys are saying but good stuff. Have a great weekend. | ||
| Blake |
I have no idea who authored that answer. Try google for more reporting on "gnostic gospels." They are fraudulent. Any credible scholar of new testament biblical era writings will confirm that. | ||
| Tankhead |
Thanks (Message edited by tankhead on September 17, 2011) | ||
| Blake |
I wonder if SDave would agree to debat Dr. Craig. | ||
| Tankhead |
Oh And for the record Dawkins and Craig have debated here is one part of it. Haven't had time to check it all out but yes they have debated.. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dRmKA5zUYBI&feature =related | ||
| Blake |
That wasn't quite a debate between Dawkins and Craig. Actually, it wasn't even close. It was a forum where a bunch of folks each got a turn to present their views on the question of god. There was no chance to rebut. Dawkins is afraid to engage Craig in an actual one-on-one scholarly debate. His preferred tonic is quite bitter, much like SDave's. Not surprising as SDave expresses deep admiration for the man. | ||
| Superdavetfft |
Blake I see you're trolling along nicely... I was going to avoid this but what the heck. And no, debating a true believer/creationist is a waste of time (as I believe I stated before). One can only debate if two parties are willing to entertain alternative viewpoints and accept facts when presented and proven sound. This is not possible when dealing with folks like Blake... you're not open to any critical thinking that threatens this 'god' notion. If you can't believe the facts discovered by science regarding history, If you can't see the fact christianity is just a clone of a 3000 yr old egyptian religion (Horus/Osiris) among OTHERS. I can't recall how many 'gods' have the same specs but it's a bunch... If you can't see the religions cherry pick 'nice bits' from the bible and yet disregard/ignore the majority of nasty bits such as god killing children and endorsing rape... Really I could continue but it's pointless until you wake up... Religion is a silly superstition based out of man's own fear of mortality, nothing more, nothing less. It was then bastardized by people in power and has been used as a tool to control people for thousands of years. Dawkins stated his reasons for not debating creationists on youtube, if you want to get the real answer then go listen to him... Still waiting for proof that Fred's not here btw... | ||
| Superdavetfft |
Sifo; I don't have much time this week to play but here's a good source of information regarding origins of 'stuff' http://www.talkorigins.org/ It's fact, not much to debate, sorry... | ||
| Sifo |
Superdave, I don't know how to break this to you but science doesn't have a theory that is workable regarding the origins of life, much less proven it to be fact. You do understand that my question has to do with the origin of life, not evolution don't you? Do you understand the difference? | ||
| Tankhead |
Blake: You said,That wasn't quite a debate between Dawkins and Craig. (minus the trashing of Dawkins). I was responding because you accused me of lying, which I did not take lightly sir, so I retracted my statement. But after looking at the video again, I felt that it was valid enough to qualify as a brief debate of concepts for all included in that forum (video). Semantics is not something I will argue regarding this but I intended no disrespect nor was I being dishonest. Just sayin. (Message edited by tankhead on September 20, 2011) | ||
| Tankhead |
Sifo: I haven't forgot you. Would this article be a good way for me to start gathering my opinion or should I read something else? And if this article is not good enough why would it not be? I have only had a chance to read half of it but I am at work on lunch break. Thanks for answering this question for me. http://www.science20.com/stars_planets_life/calculating_odds_life_could_begin_chance Many people, perhaps most, hate the idea that life might depend on chance processes. It is a human tendency to search for meaning, and what could be more meaningful than the belief that our lives have a greater purpose, that all life in fact is guided by a supreme intelligence which manifests itself even at the level of individual molecules? Proponents of intelligent design believe that the components of life are so complex that they could not possibly have been produced by an evolutionary process. To bolster their argument, they calculate the odds that a specific protein might assemble by chance in the prebiotic environment. The odds against such a chance assembly are so astronomically immense that a protein required for life to begin could not possibly have assembled by chance on the early Earth. Therefore, the argument goes, life must have been designed. It is not my purpose to argue against this belief, but the intelligent design argument uses a statistical tool of science -- a probability calculation -- to make a point, so I will use another tool of science, which is to propose an alternative hypothesis and test it. In living cells, most catalysts are protein enzymes, composed of amino acids, but in the 1980s another kind of catalyst was discovered. These are RNA molecules composed of nucleotides that are now called ribozymes. Because a ribozyme can act both as a catalyst and as a carrier of genetic information in its nucleotide sequence, it has been proposed that life passed through an RNA World phase that did not require DNA and proteins. For the purposes of today’s column I will go through the probability calculation that a specific ribozyme might assemble by chance. Assume that the ribozyme is 300 nucleotides long, and that at each position there could be any of four nucleotides present. The chances of that ribozyme assembling are then 4^300, a number so large that it could not possibly happen by chance even once in 13 billion years, the age of the universe. But life DID begin! Could we be missing something? The answer, of course, is yes, we are. The calculation assumes that a single specific ribozyme must be synthesized for life to begin, but that’s not how it works. Instead, let’s make the plausible assumption that an enormous number of random polymers are synthesized, which are then subject to selection and evolution. This is the alternative hypothesis, and we can test it. Now I will recall a classic experiment by David Bartel and Jack Szostak, published in Science in 1993. Their goal was to see if a completely random system of molecules could undergo selection in such a way that defined species of molecules emerged with specific properties. They began by synthesizing many trillions of different RNA molecules about 300 nucleotides long, but the nucleotides were all random nucleotide sequences. Nucleotides, by the way, are monomers of the nucleic acids DNA and RNA, just as amino acids are the monomers, or subunits, of proteins, and making random sequences is easy to do with modern methods of molecular biology. They reasoned that buried in those trillions were a few catalytic RNA molecules called ribozymes that happened to catalyze a ligation reaction, in which one strand of RNA is linked to a second strand. The RNA strands to be ligated were attached to small beads on a column, then were exposed to the trillions of random sequences simply by flushing them through the column. This process could fish out any RNA molecules that happened to have even a weak ability to catalyze the reaction. They then amplified those molecules and put them back in for a second round, repeating the process for 10 rounds. By the way, this is the same basic logic that breeders use when they select for a property such as coat color in dogs. The results were amazing. After only 4 rounds of selection and amplification they began to see an increase in catalytic activity, and after 10 rounds the rate was 7 million times faster than the uncatalyzed rate. It was even possible to watch the RNA evolve. Nucleic acids can be separated and visualized by a technique called gel electrophoresis. The mixture is put in at the top of a gel held between two glass plates and a voltage is applied. Small molecules travel fastest through the gel, and larger molecules move more slowly, so they are separated. In this case, RNA molecules having a specific length produce a visible band in a gel. At the start of the reaction, nothing could be seen, because all the molecules are different. But with each cycle new bands appeared. Some came to dominate the reaction, while others went extinct. Bartel and Szostak’s results have been repeated and extended by other researchers, and they demonstrate a fundamental principle of evolution at the molecular level. At the start of the experiment, every molecule of RNA was different from all the rest because they were assembled by a chance process. There were no species, just a mixture of trillions of different molecules. But then a selective hurdle was imposed, a ligation reaction that allowed only certain molecules to survive and reproduce enzymatically. In a few generations groups of molecules began to emerge that displayed ever-increasing catalytic function. In other words, species of molecules appeared out of this random mixture in an evolutionary process that closely reflects the natural selection that Darwin outlined for populations of higher animals. These RNA molecules were defined by the sequence of bases in their structures, which caused them to fold into specific conformations that had catalytic properties. The sequences were in essence analogous to genes, because the information they contained was passed between generations during the amplification process. The Bartel and Szostak experiment directly refutes the argument that the odds are stacked against an origin of life by natural processes. The inescapable conclusion is that genetic information can in fact emerge from random mixtures of polymers, as long as the populations contain large numbers of polymeric molecules with variable monomer sequences, and a way to select and amplify a specific property. I will close with a quote from Freeman Dyson, a theoretical physicist at Princeton University who also enjoys thinking about the origin of life: “You had what I call the garbage bag model. The early cells were just little bags of some kind of cell membrane, which might have been oily or it might have been a metal oxide. And inside you had a more or less random collection of organic molecules, with the characteristic that small molecules could diffuse in through the membrane, but big molecules could not diffuse out. By converting small molecules into big molecules, you could concentrate the organic contents on the inside, so the cells would become more concentrated and the chemistry would gradually become more efficient. So these things could evolve without any kind of replication. It's a simple statistical inheritance. When a cell became so big that it got cut in half, or shaken in half, by some rainstorm or environmental disturbance, it would then produce two cells which would be its daughters, which would inherit, more or less, but only statistically, the chemical machinery inside. Evolution could work under those conditions.” Man I have tried to make the conclusion in bold print three times and it gets cut from the page instead of making the conclusion in bold print.Sorry (Message edited by tankhead on September 20, 2011) (Message edited by tankhead on September 20, 2011) (Message edited by tankhead on September 20, 2011) | ||
| Sifo |
I'm not sure how that reflects on my question. I'll repeat it. Scientific theories typically predict things. This is one of the ways that we can look at a theory and see if it really makes sense. Gravity for instance predicts that objects in space will orbit each other. If objects in space behaved differently than our theory predicts, then there is almost certainly a problem with the theory. So when it comes to the theory that the origin of life comes from random events, i.e., chance, that theory will make predictions. One of those predictions is that the information contained in DNA was assembled by chance, until it just happened upon a combination that could replicate and become life as we know it. We know that there is a very large amount of information contained in the simplest of DNA strands. It is enormously complex. We know that the information contained in DNA is unique, i.e., it isn't repetitive in nature such as fractals. We also know that it is useful information, i.e., it serves a purpose, to produce a life form. Now it's certainly conceivable that chance can produce a large quantity of information. It's also conceivable that chance can produce unique information. It's even conceivable that chance can produce useful or purposeful information. Combining all three takes a whole lot of chance though. Assuming it were even possible to have chance assemble the needed information to produce a simple life form, certainly mixed in with that large amount of unique and useful information will be a huge amount of random garbage included. That is the nature of chance happenings. What we have learned studying DNA is that there is very little useless information. In fact most of what we used to think was useless information has been found to have purposes that weren't initially realized. That trend of identifying the purpose of various parts of DNA strings continues. DNA seems to have very little if any useless information. What's more is that science typically will look for examples to point to that are similar in nature to what is being hypothesized as support for the fact that what is being proposed is know to happen similarly in other areas of nature. I'm unaware of nature ever producing large amounts of unique and useful, purposeful information that could possibly parallel what we are talking about with DNA. That leads us to believe that nature producing DNA is not typical of what nature normally does. There is however a known source of large amounts of unique, useful, purposeful information that exits in the universe. That is a parallel that scientific method should demand that we explore. That source of known large amounts of unique, useful purposeful information is of course an intelligent designer. Here we can see countless examples where intelligent designers have compiled information of all sorts, including the motorcycles we ride. So the question is: Does the large amount of unique, useful, purposeful information seen in DNA support the scientific theory of chance or intelligent design? |
