Life From Dirt?

[Little Dragon]

The God theory is sounding more and more plausible.

You mean the un-testable and unsubstantiated hypothesis that a supernatural deity created the first single celled organisms with essentially magic, and then sat back a few billion years waiting for them to evolve into you and me among other things?

That is not very plausible at all.

 

[blü 2]

This is not completely accurate. There is no evidence that ‘points to a single origin’. The Tree of Life is no tree; it’s a bush, with many different organisms appearing abruptly, early in the emergence of phyla, the very ones existing today.

Again by quick search, here's a National Geographic article from 2010 reporting on one such study and its conclusions. As you'll see, they favor the single origin view.

The other evidence which is claimed for common ancestry — the similarity of genes found in diverse organisms — is interpreted as “shared” genes, supposedly indicating a relatedness; whereas it could also be interpreted that they were simply duplicated by the Creator, when Jehovah was forming living things with similar features from different families, like vertebrae, ears, teeth, etc. in both felidae and canidae.

But that would require agreement on the existence in reality of such a Creator, the identity of that Creator (or those Creators), and an intimate knowledge of the Creator's powers and the manner in which they worked. (I've long been perplexed by the indifference of the churches as to how "miracles" ─ alterations to reality independently of the rules of reality ─ actually work. If such powers existed, they'd be a very important addition to our knowledge of reality, and what we could do.)

Meanwhile no Creator has been detected in our researches of reality (by which I mean the world external to the self, which we know about through our senses). So from an investigator's point of view, there's nothing there to investigate.

 

[shunyadragon]

You mean just like you’re explanation / interpretation of the abrupt appearance of unique body plans in the Cambrian explosion.

There was an abrupt appearance in the Cambrian. The key contradiction in your statement is the diversity in the Cambrian was indeed an expansion from the previously existing diversity of life from the Precambrian.

Precambrian | Life, Climate, & Facts | Britannica

Precambrian, period of time extending from about 4.6 billion years ago (the point at which Earth began to form) to the beginning of the Cambrian Period, approximately 541 million years ago. The Precambrian represents more than 80 percent of the total geologic record.

www.britannica.com

The earliest evidence for the advent of life includes Precambrian microfossils that resemble algae, cysts of flagellates, tubes interpreted to be the remains of filamentous organisms, and stromatolites (sheetlike mats precipitated by communities of microorganisms). In the late Precambrian, the first multicellular organisms evolved, and sexual division developed. By the end of the Precambrian, conditions were set for the explosion of life that took place at the start of the Cambrian, the first period of the Phanerozoic Eon (541 million years ago to the present).

The Precambrian environment

Several rock types yield information on the range of environments that may have existed during Precambrian time. Evolution of the atmosphere is recorded by banded-iron formations (BIFs), paleosols (buried soil horizons), and red beds, whereas tillites (sedimentary rocks formed by the lithification of glacial till) provide clues to the climatic patterns that occurred during Precambrian glaciations.

You do not believe in any scientific version of life on earth except to dishonestly. selectively cite references you do not understand to justify your ancient tribal agenda.

Evolution expansions in diversity throughout the history of life on earth is driven by changes in the environment, Maybe more to follow.

 

[Jimmy]

You mean the un-testable and unsubstantiated hypothesis that a supernatural deity created the first single celled organisms with essentially magic, and then sat back a few billion years waiting for them to evolve into you and me among other things?

That is not very plausible at all.

No the one where the world began around 1980. Yeah that one

 

[Little Dragon]

You mean just like the explanation / interpretation of the abrupt appearance of unique body plans in the Cambrian explosion.

Made up to justify the bias.

There are plenty of pre cambrian fossils of multicellular animals and plants. Soft bodied forms dominated before the Cambrian period. These forms do not fossilize easily so the so called "explosion" is nothing more than observational/subjective bias. During the Cambrian there was a diversification of living things, including the appearance of animals with hard body parts, shells and exoskeletons. Which fossilize much more readily. Therefore easier to find.

 

[Little Dragon]

No the one where the world began around 1980. Yeah that one

Not plausible. Not testable. Not falsifiable. Not a theory,

 

[Hockeycowboy]

“Your ignorance…”

Why do you, many times, attempt to belilttle my knowledge? It reflects poorly on your debating skills. Reasoning people don’t have to resort to such tactics.

You don’t know all I know…. So stop it.

 

[blü 2]

I don’t know about‘Christian fundamentalists,’ but the evidence discovered in the Cambrian explosion (in fact, all animal explosions, like the mammalian), and the evidence the fossil record provides (bemoaned by evolution supporters like Colin Patterson & Stephen Jay Gould), are fine testaments to the explanatory deficits of evolution.

Take care.

Gould's book on the Burgess Shales was Wonderful Life, basically about the role of luck in evolution (and remembered outside of that for the cries of others who complained Gould had misrepresented their work, but I'm not aware that any of this invalidated his central thesis.)

Yes, there are deficits within the theory of evolution, principally because of the rather arbitrary nature of the evidence; but so far none of them challenges the central thesis of evolution, that life on earth began billions of years ago from a single source (perhaps that should be, 'single successful source') and went on from there to what we see in 2023 ─ Covid bugs, fire ants, chihuahuas, and all those danged people.

 

[Jimmy]

Not plausible. Not testable. Not falsifiable. Not a theory,

No you’re right. It’s a fact imo

 

[Little Dragon]

No you’re right. It’s a fact imo

At least you are not easily swayed by reason and logic.

 

[Jimmy]

At least you are not easily swayed by reason and logic.

Haha life is far more complex than logic

 

[Little Dragon]

Covid bugs, fire ants, chihuahuas, and all those danged people.

Plus my personal favourite wild animal (other than dogs) the noble Elephants. I would die a happy dragon, if I got to spend a few weeks in India, meeting wild elephants and interacting with them. If I see ivory, my blood boils.

 

[Little Dragon]

Haha life is far more complex than logic

Are you saying, you think the complexity of life is beyond logical reduction?
Because if so, then that's an admission of incredulity. A naivety, imo.

 

[Jimmy]

Oh did I not mention this is a hypothetical thread as I believe the world began around 1980 anyway haha .

 

[Subduction Zone]

I don’t know about‘Christian fundamentalists,’ but the evidence discovered in the Cambrian explosion (in fact, all animal explosions, like the mammalian), and the evidence the fossil record provides (bemoaned by evolution supporters like Colin Patterson & Stephen Jay Gould), are fine testaments to the explanatory deficits of evolution.

Take care.

Your knowledge is about fifty years out of date.

 

[shunyadragon]

I don’t know about‘Christian fundamentalists,’ but the evidence discovered in the Cambrian explosion (in fact, all animal explosions, like the mammalian), and the evidence the fossil record provides (bemoaned by evolution supporters like Colin Patterson & Stephen Jay Gould), are fine testaments to the explanatory deficits of evolution.

Take care.

No deficits of evolution nor bemoaned by evolution supporters. This the natural process of evolution responding to changes in the environment throughout the history of life.

I am a geologist with over fifty years of experience. I know of no reputable scientist who bemoans any aspects of evolution. The only thing I bemoan is the wide profound ignorance of believers who reject evolution and science based on an ancient tribal religious agenda.

 

[Jimmy]

No deficits of evolution nor bemoaned by evolution supporters. This the natural process of evolution responding to changes in the environment throughout the history of life.

I am a geologist with over fifty years of experience. I know of no reputable scientist who bemoans any aspects of evolution. The only thing I bemoan is the wide profound ignorance of believers who reject evolution and science based on an ancient tribal religious agenda.

I reject evolution and science based on modern day reality when it comes to the big questions. Other than that I like science

 

[shunyadragon]

Why do you, many times, attempt to belilttle my knowledge? It reflects poorly on your debating skills. Reasoning people don’t have to resort to such tactics.

You don’t know all I know…. So stop it.

Debating skills is not the issue. It is your intentional ignorance and misrepresentation of science and scientists

Your intentional ignorance of science based on an ancient tribal agenda is easy to belittle, and I will continue to do so. This includes your unethical misrepresentation of scientists like Colin Patterson & Stephen Jay Gould. Stop misrepresenting science and scientists.

Stephan Gould did not agree with punctuated equilibria, but he did not reject evolution.

Collin Patterson was grossly misrepresented and misquotedone of his talks by Creationists.

https://www.arn.org/docs/odesign/od171/colpat171.htmfrom

On November 5, 1981, Patterson gave a now infamous talk at the American Museum of Natural History in New York, to the Systematics Discussion Group which met monthly at the museum. An unknown creationist in the audience secretly taped the talk, and a transcript was soon circulating as samizdat among creationists, and shortly thereafter among the scientific community at large.

The uncorrected transcript was plainly flawed--giving "Conbear" for "von Baer," for instance, and omitting the names of well-known biologists--but enough of Patterson's provocative points came through to ignite the firestorm which followed. Patterson soon came in for heavy criticism from the evolutionary community. The talk was much debated: what had he meant; was he simply tweaking noses in New York; what did he really think about evolution?

As creationist writers trumpeted the speech, Patterson retreated, understandably annoyed by the episode and the voluminous correspondence he received in its wake.

In August 1993, at a Systematics Association meeting in London, Patterson revisited his 1981 talk; specifically, the bearing of evolution on the practice and philosophy of systematics: ordering the relationships of organisms. In his recollections (published last year; see the notes on p.7), Patterson describes the background of the talk:

In November 1981, after an invitation from Donn Rosen [a fish systematist at the American Museum, now deceased], I gave a talk to the Systematics Discussion Group in the American Museum of Natural History. Donn asked me to talk on 'Evolutionism and Creationism', and it happened that just one week before my talk Ernst Mayr published a paper on systematics in Science (Mayr 1981). Mayr pointed out the deficiencies (in his view) of cladistics and phenetics, and noted that the 'connection with evolutionary principles is exceedingly tenuous in many recent cladistic writings.' For Mayr, classifications should incorporate such things as 'inferences on selection pressures, shifts of adaptive zones, evolutionary rates, and rates of evolutionary divergence.' Fired up by Mayr's paper, I gave a fairly radical talk in New York, comparing the effect of evolutionary theory on systematics with Gillespie's (1979, p. 8) characterization of pre-Darwinian creationism: 'not a research govering theory (since its power to explain was only verbal) but an antitheory, a void that had the function of knowledge but, as naturalists increasingly came to feel, conveyed none.' Unfortunately, and unknown to me, there was a creationist in my audience with a hidden tape recorder. A transcript of my talk was produced and circulated among creationists, and the talk has since been widely, and often inaccurately, quoted in creationist literature. 2

Your knowledge is about fifty years out of date.

About 180 years out of date at least. Lucretius was more in line with today's science.

 

[idea]

Dust to dust.

matter, energy, information, conscience - I think these are the eternal building blocks of the universe, cannot be created or destroyed, changing form. Just as matter is changed by energy, I think it can also be changed with conscience. Just as I don't see a single energy source for it all, I don't see a single conscience source for it all - just another substance that forms things.

 

[shunyadragon]

I reject evolution and science based on modern day reality when it comes to the big questions. Other than that I like science

So far you have not offered anything constructive or meaningful on any threads concerning evolution. Your mind has a crack stuck in 1980. This amounts to a rejection of the sciences of evolution based on your ancient tribal agenda. The sciences of evolution are supported by over 95% of all scientists in the fields related to evolution and every major university in the world.

If you 'like' science enroll in a high school and get the basics of science concerning evolution. If that is too difficult get yourself an elementary school science kit.

If you still flunk out Bob Jones will accept you, but your degree will come off a perforated roll.