Originally posted by Nineveh
You agreed to the simplification of what you believe, I've corrected you twice.
Disagreed and corrected are not the same thing. I missed where you told me where God got the matter, or where you told me what non-flukey thing He did to create life. Isn’t that what you want me to explain? And although you gave a seemingly more specific prediction about what the initial product was, since we’ll never know what a biblical kind is, you’ll never be able to specify what that initial product was!
Originally posted by Nineveh
He created matter through the power of His Word.
What does that mean, exactly? Created it from what? Isn’t that what you’re asking me?
Originally posted by Nineveh
I'm not the one making excuses like, " I don't even see the relevance of our beliefs!" If you don't want to share what you believe fine, we can end the convo.
Nice dodge there, avoiding entirely the issue I raised! Here, let me repeat: “Genesis gives only a very general overview. Remember how you said it's not a science textbook? If you're not willing to reach past Genesis, to give any more details than me on how it all began, why aren't you just as guilty of dodging?�
Originally posted by Nineveh
To me it matters.
Ah, I like how you conveniently leave out the rest of my statement. Here, let me remind you what else I said here: “I never claimed to. My argument, from the start, has been that you don't have to know how it all began to understand what it's been up to since. You seem to reject that idea, for reasons that are as yet unarticulated, as well as my "beliefs" about how it all began. But your beliefs about how it all began don't seem any more developed than mine.� So, apparently, to you it only matters how undeveloped my ideas are, not yours?
Originally posted by Nineveh
Ok, would it be easier for you to answer, "What happened to bring about matter and what happened to bring about that matter becoming an "ancestor"? Either way:
"matter came from somewhere, something flukey happened and we wound up with something."
seems to cover what you believe about it all.
… from which you would conclude what?
Originally posted by Nineveh
No more than abiogenesis can explain how it happend without His hand.
As you well know, “No more than� is the same as “Only as much as, or less than�, and encompasses “Absolutely none whatsoever.� Why don’t you just say “absolutely none whatsoever�? If you disagree with this, then please show me that evidence.
Originally posted by Nineveh
Not quite.
Remember, you say "somtheing flukey happened in the environment (nature)" to allow such a thing as abiogenisis to happen. God designed a functioning environment then placed life into it. Scientists can get a few amino acids with different environments.
You’ve just repeated yourself. That doesn’t clarify anything.
I don’t think it’s quite accurate to say something flukey happened in the environment to allow abiogenesis. It’s more accurate to say that conditions favorable to abiogenesis are pretty darn rare.
How do you define “functioning environment�? What do you mean by a functioning, lifeless environment?
Originally posted by Nineveh
"Perfectly awful" meaning?
Extremely incompatible.
Originally posted by Nineveh
Science is looking for a naturalistic answer, but so far what they are finding is specialized environments for one or two amino acids at a time. They are also finding one specialized environment too hostile for other amino acids.
Your point being…?
Originally posted by Nineveh
Probably? What evidence have you found to support your idea?
Well, think about it. There are lots and lots and lots and lots and lots of fossils that belong to organisms that look very different to nothing like anything that is alive today, from which I conclude that
today’s living organisms do not completely cover the diversity of life in earlier times. Is that unreasonable?
Now, think about all the organisms for which we have absolutely no fossil record, particularly microorganisms. Does the fact that we have no fossil record for these guys tell you that they did not exist in earlier times? I hope not! For that matter, does the fact that they weren’t mentioned in Genesis imply that they weren’t around when other life forms were? We
know that rates of evolution depend on, among other things, generation times, and that microorganisms have, on average, far faster generation times than do macroorganisms. So if we see lots of macroorganisms in the fossil record that look nothing like modern macroorganisms, it is a virtual certainty that the microorganisms of these days were probably even more different from modern microorganisms. Is that unreasonable?
Now, under the “anything but the literal interpretation of Genesis� view, the earliest life was surely not a macroorganism. Thus, microorganisms not only have the potential to change more rapidly than do macroorganisms, but they’ve been around much longer to do so. Thus, the earliest life forms would have been very, very different from anything we know about today. Is that unreasonable?
I understand that you won’t consider this “evidence;� your filter on evidence for ideas you don’t like is severe enough that it is absolutely impossible for there to be any Niniveh-approved evidence for any of this (heck, it is theoretically impossible to produce evidence that could convince you that birds evolved from dinosaurs, and that happened billions of years later!).
But so what? This may come as a shock to you, since you obviously don’t
read anything I write unless you can find a way to twist it to your advantage, but I don’t actually work in this discipline. You asked for my thoughts on the subject. One of my thoughts, more of a suspicion, is that life today is extremely different from life at the start, and I believe I even commented that I suspected that this idea isn’t fully appreciated in the larger biological community. So why would you even expect me to have evidence? At least I can present a logical, coherent case.
Originally posted by Nineveh
Well, as of those two questions, you don't seem to be among them.
Because I don’t dwell on these two questions? That’s pretty cynical. And ironic: I obviously don’t spent more than a tiny fraction of the time you spend pondering these imponderables, and yet so far I don’t see any way in which your story is any stronger than mine in detail, coherence, evidential support, and completeness.
Would you be interested in a thread about that in a couple of days?
