Originally posted by Nineveh
Do you consider the layer effect of a tide laying down sediment in your argument against his work?
Sure. The issue of tides only is relevant for coals associated with marine formations. This is the motivation for Austin's choice of Pennsylvanian aged coals from Kentucky. From the following:
http://www.uky.edu/KGS/coal/webcoal/pages/wkcf.html
we see that these coals are interbedded with limestones, indicating the periodic innudations of a coastal region as cycles of sea level (or periods of subsidence and uplift) changes occur. This cycle of transgressions and regressions, to use geologists' terminology, is not uncommon for Pennsylvanian coals, though, usually coals are interbedded with clay, sandstones, or shaley sequences, rather than limestones.
Western coals, which constitute the majority of the US (and world) coal resources, are not generally associated with marine sediments. The clays and sandstones seen underlying and overlying western coals are more consistent with a deltaic environment.
The limestones seen in the Kentucky examples are actually quite a bit of a problem for Austin's rapid formation hypothesis. Limestones form via a process of chemical precipitation, indicating that the process of formation of the limestone layers was lengthy, rather than instant.
The only place where tidal effects need to be considered in the case of the Pennsylvanian coals is the boundaries between the rock units. Tidal dominated environments tend not to be environments of deposition. Rather these tend to be environments where deposition and erosion are in equilibrium, resulting in extremely flat topography. Indeed, the origin of the uniformly flat boundaries between the overlying limestone layers and the coal.
Nothing like this is seen in the majority of western coals.
The DVD wasn't intended for the "scientific" community. The ideas were expressed in laymen's terms, sorta like that PBS special on evo. Nothing wrong with explaining ideas in language the majority will understand.
Basically, the film *misrepresented* the ID movement.
It's called "propaganda". Just like a Michael Moore movie.
I think those who put more faith in ID than evo do quite a bit of work and publish quite a bit of info. But as far as seeing their ideas on ID, it won't be in "mainstream science journals", it isn't welcome.
If ID were science, then scientific papers could be written about it. We all are still waiting with bated breath for that to happen.
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You mean to say Kenyon's problem has been worked out? Scientists have found a way to get left handed amino acids not only to stick together but also in the right order to produce one of 30,000 protiens? Where is the link to these findings? Kenyon couldn't get past both needing to be present to work. Your solution to Kenyon's problem only makes matters worse, not better, now where did the RNA come from?
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1) As to chirality (handedness) basically I have answered this one. The claim by creationists is that there is no possible solution to the question of why all of our biochemistry is left-handed. The answer is that polarized UV light will do the trick.
Recent discoveries regarding polarized light in the Orion Nebula suggest that the conditions of the formation of the solar system would have supplied the necessary UV innundation on the early earth:
http://www.ast.cam.ac.uk/AAO/local/www/jab/astrobiology/chirality.html
(As comments about "getting them to stick together" you would have to provide a reference. Basically most of organic chemistry deals with left-handed amino acids. People have been synthesizing proteins for decades.)
2) Origin of RNA
Clays have been known for some time to catalyze nucleotides into RNA.
Here is a page by Andrew Ellington on the subject:
http://biotech.icmb.utexas.edu/pages/science/RNA.html
(So, the idea is that rhibosomes are the leftovers of the life of the RNA world.)
Origin of RNA: Here is work by
Jack Stozak:
http://www.hhmi.org/news/szostak3.html
(Search on RNA world on google for more.)
This (the RNA world) s the hot area of research in abiogenesis, but our friend Kenyon didn't have much to say about it. Indeed, he has had very little to say about the subject. Indeed, his comments such as those at the ARN site are simply the pathetic whining of a man out of touch with his former discipline.
3) RNA as an enzyme:
http://www.hhmi.org/annual99/a255.html
In Kenyon's day, people thought you had to have enzymes to produce proteins but that you needed to have proteins before you could have nucleic acids. That apprently is not true.
In summary, you would never know about any of the scientific discoveries and their impact on abiogenesis research if you were getting your info from the Unlocking... movie.
Perhaps you should re read his argument and prepare a rebuttle to that instead of making up his argument to knock it down.
Brewer's Impact article:
http://www.icr.org/pubs/imp/imp-341.htm
A skeptic's easy refutation of Brewer's article:
http://www.ntskeptics.org/2001/2001december/december2001.htm
(Let's not also forget that microorganisms exchange DNA cross-species further muddying the waters.)
Anyway, that was 2001, it is now 2004, and we don't see a bunch of papers ringing the death knell of common descent, so Brewer's claim does not seem to be holding up.
(..brain as nonlinear network of nodes with potentials...)
We don't have the first clue how the brain really works yet it evolved. From what for what purpose?
We have plenty of clues as to how the brain works, in terms of its structure. The problem to a large degree is one of understanding the behavior of highly nonlinear systems.
Neural nets, which are computer algorithms modeled on neurons and synapses do exhibit the property of learning and pattern recognition and are used for that purpose. The brain is vastly more complicated than these "toy" applications. (You can search on neural net for articles on this sort of thing.)
(emotions as chemistry)
I bet you are a real romantic. Does your wife/gf think that is all the more you care for her other than some mindless misfires?
This isn't my idea, it is Dr. Candace Pert's:
http://home.earthlink.net/~denmartin/moe.html
(conscience as cultural programming)
Really?
Who told you it was wrong to rape a child? Did you really have to be told?
We all have to be taught about right and wrong to a large degree. As to your child-rape example, we do not come out of the womb knowing what rape is, or what is or is not rape. What is called "rape" today, in other cultures, ancient Greece for example, was normal behavior. (It was normal in ancient Greece for males to practice what we would call pedophilia, today.)
Indeed, imprinting of our childhood experiences prepare us to a large degree for our adult behavior. Today's abused child is tomorrow's child abuser. (Indeed, such a pedophile doen't think that he or she is doing anything wrong.)
Our parents and our culture educate us and raise our consciousness to such matters.
