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Wait a minute. Evolution and Big Bang Theory are 2 different things. Evolution is the gradual changing of species over long periods of time by natural selection. Lots of evidence to support this theory by Darwin. Regarded by many (including myself) that the theory has been proven.
Your argument against Hawkins experiment was his faulty proof that life was created in a lifeless environment. That theory along with the Big Bang Theory and Creationist theory are all, IMHO, unproven theory.
Just like the dangers of manmade Climate Change, IMHO, is a proven theory, whereas the theory that it is all an elaborate hoax by thousands of climate scientists, IMHO, is a unproven theory.
Good that you bring up these points, Bob.
I am fully in agreement that evolution is a proven theory. It does happen, no doubt about it, and it makes absolute sense given that genetic mutations do occur in all species.
What does not make sense is the hijacking of evolution theory to assert that no creator is needed to explain the existence of life in the universe because LIFE ITSELF evolved.... as Hawking said in his show, "life from lifeless molecules". And then he used live bacteria to "prove" it!
What Cloutier and Hawking and so many others are saying is that because bacteria can make copies of themselves to reproduce, and because RNA can make copies of itself with no input from a creator, therefore life can evolve from lifelessness. And as Cloutier has done here, they use long time intervals (4 billion years) to assert that over that amount of time, it is bound to happen: life is sure to arise.
It's a unproven hypothesis and will remain so until someone can demonstrate a way to do it. Anyone can believe in it if they want to, but no one can assert it as provable fact. Nevertheless, Hawking on his show did just that, and gets away with it because of his reputation. But not everyone is drinking the KoolAid!
Incidentally, part and parcel of this theory for its believers is that man will eventually, as Cloutier laughingly says, "figure out everything" which means that man will figure out how to live eternally in this physical universe. First of all, aging and disease will be eradicated. And once that is done, as the eons go by, the human body will be further engineered to be immune to all means of death, such as by fire, accident, drowning, etc. Man will become God, in essence. Ray Kurzweil is a leading proponent of this theory, and in fact says it will begin with the arrival of a Singularity somewhere between 2030 and 2050. Kurzweil is spending a fortune trying to keep himself alive until the Singularity (he's around 60 now). This is all the new man-centered religion, maybe there's even a name for it. I'm not sure if Scientology is part of this or not.
Darwin himself made this statement in The Origin of Species: “If it could be demonstrated that any complex organ existed, which could not possibly have been formed by numerous, successive, slight modifications, my theory would absolutely break down. But I can find no such case.”
I don't really think it would break down his theory, but it would break down the hijacking of his theory as described above.
I have a possible candidate case: spiders. The thing about spiders is that not only does their body create the raw material for spiderwebs -- something truly amazing in itself -- but they are each BORN with the knowledge of how to use it: how to spin intricate webs, while avoiding getting stuck in the web themselves.
How could both this capability and this knowledge evolve "by numerous, successive, slight modifications"????
Think about the earliest spider species.... maybe it suddenly mutated to be able to form the raw material in it's body. Ok.... that certainly didn't make it more "survivable" than its predecessor, so there is no reason to suppose that this new mutation would survive any more than those without it. But even if it did just by chance, when and how does the point arrive -- what exact mutation occurs -- at which the species suddenly knows how to spin an intricate web and how to catch insects with it? And at the moment that it (supposedly) suddenly does occur with one specific spider... how does that spider pass on its knowledge to its descendants?
Is such knowledge genetically passed on? Why isn't this happening with chess players? Why aren't they passing on the innate knowledge of how to mate with knight and bishop?
Many times I have seen cats watching flying birds, as the earliest non-web-spinning spider ancestors must have watched flying insects. Are cats going to evolve into "spider cats"???? Will the day arrive in so many millions of years when cats can spin super-strong webs to catch birds???
Only the rushing is heard...
Onward flies the bird.
What Cloutier and Hawking and so many others are saying is that because bacteria can make copies of themselves to reproduce, and because RNA can make copies of itself with no input from a creator, therefore life can evolve from lifelessness. And as Cloutier has done here, they use long time intervals (4 billion years) to assert that over that amount of time, it is bound to happen: life is sure to arise.
I never said life is sure to arise. All I said is that 4 billions years ago, the earth had all the required chemicals (lifeless) and an energy source. And this is sufficient to spontaneously synthesize self-replicating molecular structures. That, my friend, is a cold hard fact.
It's a unproven hypothesis and will remain so until someone can demonstrate a way to do it. Anyone can believe in it if they want to, but no one can assert it as provable fact. Nevertheless, Hawking on his show did just that, and gets away with it because of his reputation. But not everyone is drinking the KoolAid!
Obviously, we weren't there to obverse while it happened, but scientists did reproduce the conditions of the primeval soup in the lab and, surprise!, they observed that spontaneous reactions gave amino acids, nucleotides and the like.
I never said life is sure to arise. All I said is that 4 billions years ago, the earth had all the required chemicals (lifeless) and an energy source. And this is sufficient to spontaneously synthesize self-replicating molecular structures. That, my friend, is a cold hard fact.
Well if that's all you are saying, then it doesn't apply to my posts here at all, because my posting has been about Hawking trying to assert that LIFE -- NOT JUST SELF-REPLICATING STRUCTURES, BUT LIFE ITSELF -- was produced from lifelessness in the primeval soup. And again, to "prove" this, he had his guests add live bacteria to the primeval soup.
So I guess the question to you now is, do you buy Hawking's HYPOTHESIS that life arose spontaneously from this very process? Not that I really care, but you are the one who contested my posts, and I can only assume it's because you agree with Hawking and don't like to see someone point out his circular logic.
Obviously, we weren't there to obverse while it happened, but scientists did reproduce the conditions of the primeval soup in the lab and, surprise!, they observed that spontaneous reactions gave amino acids, nucleotides and the like.
Again, these are just building blocks, they are not life. The proof of LIFE appearing spontaneously from primeval soup and input of energy is still non-existent.
Obviously it would be a huge news event if some scientist ever made this happen. It's an open question as to whether such a proof would invalidate religions that profess God to have created life, because an argument could still be made that the creation of life actually began with the Big Bang. Again, that is something Hawking left out of his show.
Only the rushing is heard...
Onward flies the bird.
Again, these are just building blocks, they are not life. The proof of LIFE appearing spontaneously from primeval soup and input of energy is still non-existent.
Obviously it would be a huge news event if some scientist ever made this happen. It's an open question as to whether such a proof would invalidate religions that profess God to have created life, because an argument could still be made that the creation of life actually began with the Big Bang. Again, that is something Hawking left out of his show.
Given enough time, nucleotides and amino acids will eventually form self-replicating molecular structures such as RNA.
You can deny all you want, but this is the most likely explanation for why we are here, 4 billions years after the whole process started.
you're probably going to keep trying to push your evolutionist agenda using RNA as some kind of a proving ground. You can fool some of the people some of the time....
Actually, all what Mathieu did is to repeat what most biologists and biochemists believe (evolution is a proven fact). See this link for example:
About the Hawking's experiment to prove that life naturally comes from non-living things, remember that he is an astrophysicist, not a biologist... Maybe he should stick on astrophysics when he talks about science, and let biologists defend evolution in a more astute way...
About the Hawking's experiment to prove that life naturally comes from non-living things, remember that he is an astrophysicist, not a biologist... Maybe he should stick on astrophysics when he talks about science, and let biologists defend evolution in a more astute way...
I have not seen the show though it's hard to discuss what Hawking wanted to really show - maybe an appearance of bacteria from outer space started the life on Earth. Though this does not answer the question how those bacteria were born in the first place.
About the Hawking's experiment to prove that life naturally comes from non-living things, remember that he is an astrophysicist, not a biologist... Maybe he should stick on astrophysics when he talks about science, and let biologists defend evolution in a more astute way...
Hi Louis. Yes, I agree, if you saw my response to Bob Gillanders in this thread just 2 days ago. I agree that evolution is a fact, since DNA mutation is a proven fact.
This still doesn't explain how LIFE STARTED. Evolution does not explain how lifeless molecules become living entities.
I think Mathieu was just being his usual trolling self. He's reduced now to saying that RNA replication is the "most likely" explanation for why we are here..... which of course, is mere opinion, whereas Hawking was trying to present his explanation as fact to answer the question "What are we?". Not once in his show did Hawking mention creation as a possible explanation.
So yes, evolution a fact. No, not proven as an explanation for the spark of life.
Only the rushing is heard...
Onward flies the bird.
Hi Louis. Yes, I agree, if you saw my response to Bob Gillanders in this thread just 2 days ago. I agree that evolution is a fact, since DNA mutation is a proven fact.
This still doesn't explain how LIFE STARTED. Evolution does not explain how lifeless molecules become living entities.
I think Mathieu was just being his usual trolling self. He's reduced now to saying that RNA replication is the "most likely" explanation for why we are here..... which of course, is mere opinion, whereas Hawking was trying to present his explanation as fact to answer the question "What are we?". Not once in his show did Hawking mention creation as a possible explanation.
So yes, evolution a fact. No, not proven as an explanation for the spark of life.
By the way, I don't think we can excuse Hawking for his being an astrophysicist. He is very well aware of the competing theories of evolution and creationism to explain how life arose. As an objective scientist who is being given a TV show to answer deep questions, he should have mentioned both theories.
Only the rushing is heard...
Onward flies the bird.
By the way, I don't think we can excuse Hawking for his being an astrophysicist. He is very well aware of the competing theories of evolution and creationism to explain how life arose. As an objective scientist who is being given a TV show to answer deep questions, he should have mentioned both theories.
And here we go! Teach the controversy!
And, by the way Paul, can you disprove the Flying Spaghetti Monster? He created the Universe and life and everything. Because according to your logic, someone should be entitled to believing this. And that would then have to be considered among the other theories, right?
Wrong. Having an opinion on a matter doesn't mean it suddenly becomes a fact or a controversy or a debate. Some 'opinions' aren't really opinions and are thus flat out wrong. Creationism, in its current form, is just a fallacy and nothing else. And I said 'in its current form'. Because there would be ways to defend creationism without going against the gigantic amount of scientific information we have at hand.
By the way, I don't think we can excuse Hawking for his being an astrophysicist. He is very well aware of the competing theories of evolution and creationism to explain how life arose. As an objective scientist who is being given a TV show to answer deep questions, he should have mentioned both theories.
So evolution would try to explain how life arose? I was not aware of that. At least this is not in Darwin's writings.
Evolution is change in the heritable traits of biological populations over successive generations. It works with already living matter. At least, this is what I think since I went to high school.
Creationism is a religious explanation based on belief rather than evidence (God's existence cannot be proven), and has no credentials in biological circles. For this reason, it should be taught in a religion course, not a biology course.
Last edited by Louis Morin; Friday, 10th June, 2016, 04:43 PM.
So evolution would try to explain how life arose? I was not aware of that. At least this is not in Darwin's writings.
Evolution is change in the heritable traits of biological populations over successive generations. It works with already living matter. At least, this is what I think since I went to high school.
Creationism is a religious explanation based on belief rather than evidence (God's existence cannot be proven), and has no credentials in biological circles. For this reason, it should be taught in a religion course, not a biology course.
I'm not an astrophysicist or a biologist. I'm just a little old country boy trying to understand all this sophisticated back and forth. But you lost me, Louis. You seem to be saying that if the first spark of life occurred at time t = 0, then that's when the evolutionary clock started ticking too. But did the first spark of life happen out of the blue? Was it a total fluke or were there precursors (like the chemical soup and the energy source, blah, blah)? You seem to be saying that the precursors that were simmering away at time t = - 1/1,000,000 weren't part of the continuum of life. That seems to be similar to the argument that.you can kill a baby while it's in the womb, because it's not human yet, but you can't kill it once it has been evicted.
"We hang the petty thieves and appoint the great ones to public office." - Aesop
"Only the dead have seen the end of war." - Plato
"If once a man indulges himself in murder, very soon he comes to think little of robbing; and from robbing he comes next to drinking and Sabbath-breaking, and from that to incivility and procrastination." - Thomas De Quincey
So evolution would try to explain how life arose? I was not aware of that. At least this is not in Darwin's writings.
Evolution is change in the heritable traits of biological populations over successive generations. It works with already living matter. At least, this is what I think since I went to high school.
Evolution doesn't try to explain.... PEOPLE do! Why do you think I wrote that evolution theory has been hijacked?
Creationism is a religious explanation based on belief rather than evidence (God's existence cannot be proven), and has no credentials in biological circles. For this reason, it should be taught in a religion course, not a biology course.
Evolution hijacked to explain the origin of life itself is likewise based on belief (the initial spark of life cannot be created). Therefore it too, based on your conclusion, should have no credentials in biological circles and should not be taught in a biology course.
Closer to the truth is that both theories should be taught, because it must be one or the other. I don't know of any third theory to to explain the origin of life. Bacteria arriving from outer space still requires live to have originated, just somewhere else besides Earth.
Mathieu Cloutier seems to think that if both theories should be taught, then all versions of creationism should be taught including Flying Spaghetti Monster. Well, no, let people discover all the versions for themselves and make up their own mind, but no need to teach them all in school. But the overall concept of creationism is on equal footing with the concept of life having evolved from lifelessness through a purely physical process, regardless of whether Cloutier likes that or not.
Only the rushing is heard...
Onward flies the bird.
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