Interesting video about evolution and origins.

[Brian2]

Better chance of science finding it than someone showing "GodDidIt"...

If it cannot be found then science will not find it. Actually all science can do, and is doing, is making educated guesses of what may have happened if it all happened naturally,,,,,,,,,,, and they are running into problems.
The GodDidIt side is pointing out the silliness of the whole search, but science cannot stop searching, or making the educated guesses, and if all the problems are overcome one day then that will be the guess that is settled on I suppose.

 

[shunyadragon]

I did not see or hear "Creation Science Institute" anywhere.
Here is some information about the speaker.

"Dr. Sy Garte is a biochemist and has been a professor at New York University, University of Pittsburgh, and Rutgers University. He has authored over two hundred scientific publications and four previous books, and has served as division director at the National Institutes of Health. Sy is also the editor in chief of God and Nature magazine and vice president of the Washington, DC, chapter of the American Scientific Affiliation. He is a lay leader in the United Methodist Church."

I have to read more of his work outside Youtube to understand where he is coming from.

I am not a fan of Youtube testimonials in science or religion. Testimonials of Atheists become Theists or Theists become Atheists are equally problematic, because neither can be justified based on science.

DNA points to more DNA

 

[Brian2]

No part.
But what part shows it exists?
I've seen no scientific argument for it.

What's a scientific argument? Is that reasoning about the conclusions of the scientific date?

 

[Brian2]

Are you quite sure he says that? Where does he say it in the video?

Maybe 19 -25 minutes.

 

[shunyadragon]

He appears to be devoted advocate of 'Intelligent Design,' and I believe based on false circular assumptions on cause of the complexity of life. He apparently believes? in the process of evolution, but believes it cannot come about naturally without a Designer, ie God,

 

[Subduction Zone]

Garte mentions his "future science of the gaps" at about 24-25 mins after showing that evolution was irrelevant in the argument that God does not exist, and he was talking about how the first common ancestor came about.
And Irreducible Complexity has not been shown to be a silly argument for everything afaik.
I think the problem there is that atheists/skeptics presume the whole idea has been shown to be false because some scientist has come up with an educated guess as to how something might have evolved.

Well that is just a foolish argument on his part and shows a lack of knowledge about paleontology. It was never predicted that we would have entire lines of descent for any major species. There is no need for such a record. Tell me, if you are missing photographs of some of your great great grandparents does that mean that you were still not a line of descent that goes even further back? What the theory of evolution predicts and needs is for every discovered fossil to fit within the theory. And if the theory was false then there would be no need for ever discovered fossil to do that. If life was created we could always have found a "Precambrian Bunny Rabbit". There could be many other possible violations of the law of monophyly.

Do you understand how this is a poor argument about evolution? It has been tested and confirmed millions of times by fossil finds alone. Demanding "missing links" is just sheer ignorance.

Abd yes, IC has only been put into the form of a scientific hypothesis once. It was quickly refuted. Now its present definition puts it into the realm of pseudoscience since there is no way to test it.

But you could always show me to be wrong. Please answer these questions:

1. What is the hypothesis of IC.

2. What predictions does it make? Some of these need to be de novo predictions. You cannot legitimately base it on just what was known before people came up with the idea.

3. What test based upon its predictions could possibly refute it?

I eagerly await your response. By the way, as we learn more and more there are new ways that theories are tested. For example when it came to human evolution the difference in the number of chromosomes raised some questions. Other closes related species have different number of chromosomes too, so that was not a killer. But what we knew that we needed to find was either one join in our history or three different splits in the histories of the other great apes. And they needed to match up. In other words if we had a two chromosomes that matched up we would need to be able to find those two chromosomes in the other apes. And when we were able to fully analyze the genome we found exactly that. That was a test that could have put a big dent into our relationship to other apes. We did not know going in. Instead since it confirmed what was predicted that is now scientific evidence for human evolution. That is the sort of thing needed for IC to be more than pseudoscience.

 

[Nimos]

Like the last statement, he made when he chose to rewrite Dawkins's statement

"The Universe we observe has exactly the properties (including life) we should expect if there is, at bottom, a grand design, a purpose (such as the existence of life that can worship its Creator), good and evil, and all that is needed to justify belief in the presence of God"

What an absolute nonsense.

1. We don't know how much life is out there, so how do we know that it has exactly what we should expect?
2. There is yet to be demonstrated a grand design and purpose?
3. How many documented cases of animals, microbes etc. do we have that worship a creator besides humans?
4. Good and evil are subjective and I would even argue they are very much human (or intelligent beings) concepts and as far as I know yet to be demonstrated to exist in animals such as fish, crabs, or jellyfish etc.

 

[McBell]

If it cannot be found then science will not find it. Actually all science can do, and is doing, is making educated guesses of what may have happened if it all happened naturally,,,,,,,,,,, and they are running into problems.
The GodDidIt side is pointing out the silliness of the whole search, but science cannot stop searching, or making the educated guesses, and if all the problems are overcome one day then that will be the guess that is settled on I suppose.

Yes.
And those problems are all the "GodDidIt" has.
And it keeps getting less and less.

Do you think science is looking for god?
funny that.

 

[shunyadragon]

I hear form ID advocates claim the necessity of a "purpose" for our physical existence, life and humanity other than the simple nature of our physical existence without a subjective undefined "purpose." I hear assertions concerning the evolution of life assert that the survival of the fittest is the only purpose without a God giving it a vague inadequate purpose.

First, I believe in God and a "purpose," but this "purpose" is not remotely apparent in the nature of our physical existence, life and humanity. The actual science is not remotely concerned and neutral to any purpose. The evolution based on natural selection driven by a changing environment is not a purpose. It is simply the nature of the natural history of life. "Purpose" in nature remains a subjective anthropomorphic "Why" of the nature of our physical existence which naturally is devoid of purpose. It is best that Methodological Naturalism does not address the "Why" our physical existence, because it is possible that naturally our physical existence is objectively without "purpose."

The reality is our human existence may well be a fleeting existence in terms of millions of years at best and our solar system may become debri for future solar systems in symply the natural course of the existence of the universe, which may also have a temporal end in billions of years in the future.

 

[Valjean]

If it cannot be found then science will not find it. Actually all science can do, and is doing, is making educated guesses of what may have happened if it all happened naturally,,,,,,,,,,, and they are running into problems.
The GodDidIt side is pointing out the silliness of the whole search, but science cannot stop searching, or making the educated guesses, and if all the problems are overcome one day then that will be the guess that is settled on I suppose.

Science is more than educated guesswork It involves attempts to discredit its own findings.

 

[McBell]

Science is more than educated guesswork It involves attempts to discredit its own findings.

For some reason this post reminds me of a saying my father used to say all the time:

Locks only keep honest people honest.​

 

[exchemist]

Maybe 19 -25 minutes.

OK, thanks, I've now watched that bit and..... @Valjean is right. I was giving this guy too much credit. He is a cdesign proponentsist* [sic].

So that explains why the Biologos article, written for a more sophisticated audience, tiptoes round the issue of abiogenesis. He doesn't want to run up the Jolly Roger in front of that audience. But here, at a religious conference, it is different, and he wants to pander to the beliefs of his audience.

What he tries to do in the videoed talk is to dismiss what is sometimes called "chemical evolution". But all he can say about it is that it is

- a recent term, not well defined and that
- people have not got very far with it.

Well sure, but that hardly proves it is a wrong idea. All it means is it is a hard problem. It's obvious why that should be, seeing as there is so little physical evidence from 3.5bn years ago.

He also (and this made him go right down in my estimation) attempts a false equivalence by speaking dismissively of a "future science of the gaps", as if this is somehow equivalent to the "God of the Gaps** " - which in fact is what he himself is arguing for, though he attempts to dress it up with fancy biochemistry. But all science is "science of the gaps"! We do science to fill in gaps in our understanding of nature, by constructing theoretical models to fit our the observations. Whereas the God of the Gaps tries to shut down science by saying "God did it, case closed, no need to look for a natural explanation".

What is depressing is that he admits to having discussed the "chemical evolution" issue with James Tour, who apparently was attending the same meeting. Now James Tour I know. He is a synthetic chemist and Messianic Jew who argues abiogenesis can't be natural because, basically, he can't see how it can be done by human synthetic chemistry in a few human lifespans.

Garte also makes more false analogies, by talking about the "code" of DNA and then claiming that codes are symbolic and abstract, and that nature does not make codes. Yet DNA makes RNA by a well understood physical (biochemical) process and RNA makes proteins via another physical (biochemical) process. So there is nothing "abstract" about the code in DNA. It is a mechanical template for generating molecules with a biological function.

So I'm afraid that, at the end of the day, Garte is flaky on this. He has let his religion cloud his science and his position is intellectually incoherent and, I would say, borderline dishonest in a man as intelligent and well-qualified as he is. Not quite as bad as James Tour but going in the same direction.


* A humorous term derived from the Dover School Trial fiasco

** "God of the Gaps" is an expression coined by Prof. Charles Coulson, a mathematician, theoretical chemist and committed Christian (Methodist lay preacher), whose lectures (on maths for chemists) I attended as an undergraduate.

 

[Brian2]

That's not a goal, it's a result. You need reproduction to work properly in order for a population to survive.

There are a number of mechanisms for repair and each would need to have evolved fully working or there would be no advantage.
But maybe you are right.

 

[exchemist]

There are a number of mechanisms for repair and each would need to have evolved fully working or there would be no advantage.
But maybe you are right.

I don't see why. Early simple life could well have developed with inefficient repair mechanisms or none at all.

It's a creationist myth that all these systems would have to be fully formed before they could function. This myth has been used over and over again, and repeatedly falsified.

 

[Valjean]

There are a number of mechanisms for repair and each would need to have evolved fully working or there would be no advantage.
But maybe you are right.

Why? Why are good repair, copy or replications necessary in a competition and predation-free environment?
If microbes are churning out trillions of copies of themselves, what does it matter if half of them die? Those that remain to reproduce will be the ones with the fewest flaws and most robust replication chemistry. These traits will slowly accumulate. After a few billion years and trillions of generations, reproductive chemistry gets pretty reliable.

 

[Brian2]

There you go again with that straw man. You really have no interest in why that's wrong or how to make it right, do you? Nor do you seem to mind that I have promised to correct you every time you make it as I will again now. Most atheists neither claim that gods are impossible nor nonexistent, nor do they reject biblical god claims because the conflict with the theory of evolution. Most atheists are agnostic atheists. They reject god claims without asserting that they don't exist - merely that they have no reason to believe they exist even were there no such thing as science, and that they live as if gods don't exist. That's what agnostic atheism is, and it represents the position of most atheists.

You have the same choice again: learn this and stop making this mistake, or demonstrate that you can't or won't and continue to be corrected. You also have the choice to address this now - you never have in the past - or just continue ignoring it like it's never been written.

But you use evolution to deny the Bible and hence deny the one true God.

And yet again. Are you incapable of conceiving what I've written to you here? It seems so. I don't think you understand the objection, and I don't think you care enough to try to understand, that, or you not only just can't, you might not even be aware that you are being disagreed with, as there's no evidence in your replies that you do.

Maybe you don't understand that to a Christian the God of the Bible is the one true God and that people, including yourself, do use evolution to deny His existence.
Also I feel that Sy Garte is to an extent, aiming what he said at Christians who may deny evolution, and so he says to stop arguing about evolution. That it is origins that are important when it comes to the existence of a creator God.

I doubt that you've paraphrased Dawkins correctly. And you are committing an equivocation error, conflated the pattern or design in a natural process such as the hexagonally symmetry of a snowflake with the act of an intelligence planning and designing something deliberately. I'm pretty sure that Dawkins is acknowledging that one of these exist in nature but not the other, and that you would like that distinction ignored so that you can imply that even Dawkins thinks the world looks like it needs an intelligent designer.

Dawkins just recognises that nature looks designed afaik, but denies that it is real design, just the appearance of design.
I say nothing about snowflakes,,,,,,,,,, that's your story.

Why should that matter to anybody else?

Such as whom?

 

[Brian2]

I've never seen any atheist make such a claim that evolution negates the existence of a god.
I myself have pointed out many, many times that evolution and creator gods aren't incompatible. In fact, most of my Christian friends and family members fully accept evolution as something created by God.

I think he was aiming that at YECers who deny evolution and who have their own science which says that evolution and an old age earth are false.

I don't see design.

OK

Sounds like he's arguing a straw man then.

Evolution used to be used to deny the validity of the Bible and so the Bible God and that God, to a Christian, is the only true God.

Which of course, is abiogenesis, not evolution.

Yes.

 

[Brian2]

So let him propose an alternate mechanism.
Have you read about the research into chemical biogenesis?

I have heard some behind the scenes comments from abiogenesis researchers by James Tour, and they seem pesemistic about the search for an abiogenesis pathway.

 

[Brian2]

Chemicals are easily observed assembling into components of life, and reproducing.

I have heard of something like this happening.

How do you observe a goal? A goal is an intent; a thought. I've never observed a thought.
Evolution and biochemistry might be observable functions, but they're not observable thoughts.

That is true. I don't know how goals could be definitely observed and tested as Noble tells us.

 

[It Aint Necessarily So]

you just like to interpret the Bible in such a way that science has probably shown that it is not true. you use evolution to deny the Bible and hence deny the one true God.

I go by what the words say. They say that there exists a god that made our world in six days. Science reveals that never happened. If you'd care to try to refute that, please try. You can't. Why? Because the statement is correct. If there is a god, it's not that one. Pick one consistent with the scientific narrative. Pick one that set the universe in motion some nearly fourteen billion years ago. Pick one that set up the earth such that life and eventually human life would evolve there, because that's what the science shows happened.

Nevertheless there are ways of seeing and reasoning about the discoveries of science and what is in nature, which show that reasonable, it was designed and made so that it could evolve to fit all the environmental niches.

There is no valid reasoning that concludes, "therefore, the universe was designed." Once again, if that statement were incorrect, it could be refuted, but alas, once again, that is something that you cannot and therefore will not do.

Maybe you don't understand that to a Christian the God of the Bible is the one true God and that people, including yourself, do use evolution to deny His existence.

Not understand? You just paraphrased a comment I made. Yes. Science rules THAT god out, but not gods in the generic sense of supernatural universe creators. If you want to focus on just the god of Abraham, then yes, we can say that scientific advances have ruled that god out.

Such as whom?

I wrote, "Why should that matter to anybody else?" in response to your comment, "It is the origins of life through chemical evolution which is not scientifically sound in his opinion." The question doesn't need further clarification. It's about as simple as questions get, like yours in reply. "Anybody" refers to all other people, which means all people who are not the author of the comment. If it helps you to understand the question better, pick one or two at random, like my neighbor Mark or my high school buddy Marty. Why should that guy's opinion matter to Mark or Marty? Why should they care that the world looks like it was intelligently designed to him?

It's a rhetorical question, not a request for information like, "What time is it?" or "Are you hungry?" It's a statement dressed up as a question, and the statement is that there is no reason to care about such unargued opinions as, "I just don't see how it could have happened without intelligent oversight, so I proclaim that it did not." Every creationist says that, and none have an argument better than that one. Some embellish it with specious statistical arguments, but such numbers are imagined (see Hoyle's fallacy).