We’re Looking for a Few Good Mutations

Question from Nick:
How do you refute the argument that it is mathematically impossible for “good” mutations to occur and that evolution is mathematically impossible, and thus not a real theory, but a pseudoscience?

Short answer by SmartLX:
With evidence.

Okay, longer answer by SmartLX:
The idea that beneficial mutations are “mathematically” impossible is based on easily addressed misunderstandings of the process. The fact that the idea is so widely held by creationists despite being so easily addressed speaks to a common reluctance among their number to accept simple facts, if those facts are inconvenient.

A very simple counter to the claim is the fact that most individual mutations can potentially be reversed in subsequent generations. This is an observed and well-known phenomenon straightforwardly called reverse mutation. The list of reversible mutations includes many that would be regarded as “bad” or detrimental to survival and procreation. The reverse of these mutations would by definition be “good”, so there’s no barrier to this whatsoever.

The other effective counter is the set of beneficial mutations that have been observed. You can look them up on Google, or follow up on the short list given here. Most famously, the Lenski E.coli experiment tightly controlled an isolated population of E.coli and documented its acquisition, via repeatable mutation, of the ability to metabolise (eat) the citrate in its environment. The bacteria couldn’t do it, then they could. Creationists did everything they could to discredit this and failed pretty badly. We had our own little argument over it in the comments here (search the page for keyword “Lenski”).

74 thoughts on “We’re Looking for a Few Good Mutations”

  1. “With evidence.” This is what you said SmartLX. But you failed to show any. You have not even defended against the scientific fact that Evolution is mathematically improbable. And there is no evidence that there is any evolution going on when bacteria begin to “eat” citrate. Do the bacteria stop eating what they used to eat also, if they later are returned to their earlier, do they not want to eat what they used to eat? Here is a site disputing your one sided studying. http://www.the-scientist.com/?articles.view/articleNo/45423/title/Similar-Data–Different-Conclusions/
    Now if what changes made are automatically reversed because of a return to the original environment, then that is not a mutation, it is an adaptation. If a human leaves the USA, and goes to a different country, where the food is different. They will find that they can consume food where
    ever they find themselves. And later when they return to the USA, they will simply pick up where they had left off. We aren’t mutating, we are adapting.
    So to is the bacteria. When it can not find what it usually eats, then it automatically uses what it already has to be able to eat something else. Like a person who usually eats with a spoon. When they can’t find a spoon, then they may use some chop sticks. That isn’t mutation if what is needed already built in. And that is the case with all of what God has created He provided what we need to face most any circumstances.
    http://www.icr.org/article/bacterial-evolution-actually-design/

    1. The bacteria do not immediately stop eating their previous food sources. Features which become less useful deteriorate over time as detrimental mutations cease to have an effect on survival and are allowed to compound, which is why many underground and deep sea creatures have eyes which are almost useless.

      In the first article you refer to, the disputation is coming from the Discovery Institute. They deny that the experiment “substantiated evolution in the broader sense by generation of new genetic information, i.e. a gene with a new function”. As I mentioned elsewhere, this is contradicted by the abstract of the paper on the experiment itself: “genotypes able to [use citrate] existed in all three clades, implying that multiple potentiating mutations arose during the population’s history.” The ability did take advantage of genes that were already there at the time (hence the potential confusion upon which the DI, and the ICR in the other article, tried to capitalise), but those genes resulted from mutations in the experimental populations themselves.

      A mutation is not defined merely by an observable change in the lifeform, though many mutations do manifest as such. A mutation is a change in the genome that physically generates the lifeform, and it can have anywhere from no effect to a profound effect on the finished form. Therefore it is easy to tell the difference between a mutation and a mere adaptation. These changes we are discussing have been confirmed in the genome as mutations, so do not muddy the waters by conflating them with non-mutations in a faux-common-sense assertion. Detrimental mutations can be reversed, and when this happens it is a beneficial mutation. Accept it.

      1. “The bacteria do not immediately stop eating their previous food sources” No of course not. Why should they. They were engineered to do what they are able to do. That is why when ever the circumstances are reversed they will revert back with out millions of years to have to go by. Evolution, smellvolution. It smells like dead fish. It is not true.
        A mutation is one where the DNA has been damaged. It will not as it was originally engineered to function. Now fortunately God has built in check systems to allow that organism to function and do it well up to a point. That is why God had permitted man to intermarry for as long as it was permitted to happen. Then God knew when it was time to stop, knowing that there would be serious problems after that point. And obviously it is not easy, at least for the evolutionists, to know the difference between adaptation and mutation. Mutations need to be fixed, or built around, if possible. If not the organism will not survive. Man has the ability to fix some mutated cells. It is not the organism that is a mutation. It is the genome. And when possible it can be corrected to allow the organism to function and survive. As long as the defect from the mutated cell is not too severe. So please don’t presume to think that the way the evolutionists are trying to warp the truth to be the truth. It is not. No organism evolve. They adapt. That is why we don’t see, a different organism coming from a different parent.
        To redress, this “As I mentioned elsewhere, this is contradicted by the abstract of the paper on the experiment itself: “genotypes able to [use citrate] existed in all three clades, implying that multiple potentiating mutations arose during the population’s”
        This is not a mutation. Just because you and a million others would wish it were. It is not. The bacteria didn’t have to undergo anything other then being exposed to and limited to only one thing to choose from. They didn’t have to go in and slap it silly and make it to do so. Their diet had been different for thousands of years and they only had to get used to using a different food source. And actually not another. As I understand, what was different was that bacteria being able to use the citrates in the presence of O2. And when they were offered no other alternative it became able to do it. But when the original food was replaced. It did not have any problems reverting back. You all are fishing just to keep from having to hang your heads. And you are doing it illogically. You don’t see the whole you are opening up in the theory of evolution causing more damage that is making it even more obvious that Evolution is a lie. Because with all that you are doing to make evolution right. You are showing beyond a question of a doubt, that it takes an intelligence to manipulate the genome. To change the DNA. To cause the mechanism in that cell to operate different. And you show that if you remove all, ALL, of the DNA, that cell won’t spontaneously reproduce more DNA. That cell will die with out attention. And that attention must come from an intelligence. Please. You are doing a great disservice to Science.

    1. ?????. I’m not sure to what you are replying. If it is to my post, then please lay our your reasoning to contest what I have stated.

  2. ah the anti spam did not catch me i am smarter than a computer program or it knew i was right !

    1. “but the massing evidence from paleontology, genetics, zoology, molecular biology and other fields gradually established evolution’s truth beyond reasonable doubt.” My question is if the massing evidence from has established evolution’s truth beyond reasonable doubt, then why is evolution still being doubted? Why is it being discussed on so many other websites like this one?
      And this statement from the website, “Scientific American”(they need to change their title because what they are doing to the name of science is a downright shame). ” The NAS defines a fact as “an observation that has been repeatedly confirmed and for all practical purposes is accepted as ‘true.'” The fossil record and abundant other evidence testify that organisms have evolved through time. Although no one observed those transformations, the indirect evidence is clear, unambiguous and compelling.” Where is this clear unambiguous and compelling evidence? All that has been supplied is as this aforementioned statement, “Although no one has observed those transformations” That is right no one has observed anything in favor of evolution, but against the theory of evolution, there has been over 6000 years of observation. And that observation is that all species produce their own same identical species. That has been the observational pattern by countless human being times all the species that we have dealt with for over 6000 years. This pattern has been repeated so many times that we can be assured that this same pattern will be what is taking place far into the future. There is no reason to suspect or assume that there will be a break in this pattern. So if we follow this same over whelming and uncontroversial evidence back into the distant past, why should we expect that this pattern was not what was taking place in the past. It really is illogical to base an assumption upon the imagination of those who had not witnessed or participated in an event. They should have made their assumption not upon what they imagined but by what has been observed. And that observation is that all species came from their same species, and not from some different species that came from some other species. As the author of this statement said himself, “Although no one observed those transformations”. So anything else is flight and fancy of someones imagination, of those who have lost their senses, and refused to accept, who completely ignored, the over 6000 years of what has been observed and instead elected to accept what has never been observed. Wanting to take the evidence and make assumptions that could take them in an thousand directions, and yet not the right one, unless they included what has been observed. But they did not. And since these observations that all animals have always produced their own species, this blows out of the water any other theory of Evolution that tries to support the theory of evolution. Like the one about “Natural Selection”. Since it has been well observed for over 6000 years that each kind of organism, only produces copies of themselves and that this pattern has never been seen to have been broken, then the theory of “Natural Selection” is dead in the water, not having had the support of it sister theory. And all of this points to the only logical conclusion. Which is that an Intelligent Designer created all.

      1. Gerald writes: [“but the massing evidence from paleontology, genetics, zoology, molecular biology and other fields gradually established evolution’s truth beyond reasonable doubt.” My question is if the massing evidence from has established evolution’s truth beyond reasonable doubt, then why is evolution still being doubted?]

        It’s not being doubted by the scientific community. When over 98% of all scientists find it to be a valid theory (and they do), then you know how good it is. Don’t forget that over half of the scientists in America are religious and/or believe in a personal god too, so don’t try to pretend it’s some atheist conspiracy like you’ve claimed in the past on this website.

        [Why is it being discussed on so many other websites like this one?]

        Because there is a minority in this country that are ignorant about the scientific theory and think it is a threat to their ancient book and god creature that they’ve spent so much of their life wasting time on, that’s why. Most people know it’s a good theory and talk about other things, which is why there are even more websites talking about the start of college football than there are talking about evolution.

        [That is right no one has observed anything in favor of evolution, but against the theory of evolution, there has been over 6000 years of observation. And that observation is that all species produce their own same identical species.]

        You can see the changes in the fossils, preacher. I know that’s been a really hard thing for you to grasp over the last few years, but you can observe the change in the animals remains. You can also observe it in sequenced genomes. It has been observed in live studies. Evolution is observed in humans right now in multiple ways (link provided in previous post). The evidence is all over the place.

        [That has been the observational pattern by countless human being times all the species that we have dealt with for over 6000 years. This pattern has been repeated so many times that we can be assured that this same pattern will be what is taking place far into the future.]

        “Countless” human beings? Humans haven’t been studying evolution for “countless” generations, preacher. They’ve been studying evolution for a few hundred years. Since evolution takes time, a few hundred years isn’t enough time to see changes at the macro level. But since we already see changes in just a few hundred years, and we know there have been large changes over long periods of time, we can be assured that this same pattern will be what is taking place far into the future…

        [And all of this points to the only logical conclusion. Which is that an Intelligent Designer created all.]

        Dear readers: This little nugget of ignorance deserves special attention. The above statement I have quoted from preacher Gerald is, to be blunt, idiotic. It has been explained to him many times now that his “conclusion” is not logical or rational. Let’s pretend for the sake of this discussion that evolution was not a good scientific theory, and it did not explain all the facts we have from paleontology, biology, genetics, geology, and so forth. (This is important to note because the facts don’t simply go away just because a theory is invalidated, a key point that preacher Gerald always forgets in his ramblings). Let’s pretend for a moment that there was no current scientific theory that explained all the facts. Does this mean that the supernatural magical hocus pocus explanations must be right? NO!!!

        Why? Because the invalidation of one theory does not automatically prove a different theory. Gerald cannot seem to get this through his dogma infested brain. Look at the facts. Is there any evidence or empirical data for gods? No. Any data or evidence for magic, or the supernatural? No. Do any of the facts we have gathered to date (very old Earth, ancient fossils, sequenced genomes showing that all living things are related, and how closely they are related to each other) prove religious claims about gods and magic? No. So even if the scientific theory of evolution was not accurate, this doesn’t make “god dun it” the winner, because there still isn’t even one lousy piece of proof for the cultist claim that “god dun it”.

        If evolution wasn’t accurate, we’d still have to explain all the facts. A god creating Earth in 7 days with a magic wand doesn’t adequately explain any of the facts, much less all of them, and on top of it we can’t even prove the god exists in the first place.

        But since evolution does explain all the facts gathered to date, and creationist dribble like the stuff posted by preacher Gerald is easily refuted, we don’t need to take “god dun it” very seriously…

  3. If the link does not work, the title of the article,
    published in AMERICAN SCIENTIST, is

    “15 ANSWERS TO CREATIONISTS’ NONSENSE”

    1. I wonder if the reason he is holding back is because some or all of what I’m saying is getting through. In any case he should say so, one way or the other. Maybe one day he will.

      1. I doubt it. This has all been explained to you before, preacher Gerald, in previous topics on this website. It’s not LX’s responsibility to educate you over and over again about topics that you are ignorant on and refuse to become educated about. If LX feels it necessary to write a reply to something, I’m sure he will when he gets time. I highly doubt he has time to sit by the PC waiting for an email notifying him that someone replied to his post, like you do.

        1. Yep, time is the main factor. When I’m forced to leave some questions more than a week before answering them, replying to individual comments sometimes has to wait too, even if the replies will be short. And unlike questions sent to the site by form, comments can be addressed by people other than me in the meantime.

  4. Gerald writes: [“With evidence.” This is what you said SmartLX. But you failed to show any. You have not even defended against the scientific fact that Evolution is mathematically improbable.]

    Uh, preacher Gerald, what is there to “defend against”?

    The question from Nick contains zero useful information. It contains zero facts. It contains zero data. All we get from Nick is two unsubstantiated claims: It is mathematically impossible for good mutations to occur, and that evolution is mathematically impossible.

    If it is a “scientific fact” Gerald, then where are the facts????? Just because someone posts a question to LX and makes two statements, doesn’t mean they are accurate or correct in any way. Where are Nick’s “facts”?

    Here are some known beneficial mutations humans are going through right now:
    http://bigthink.com/daylight-atheism/evolution-is-still-happening-beneficial-mutations-in-humans

    Another link to beneficial mutations:
    http://www.gate.net/~rwms/EvoMutations.html

    Preacher Gerald writes: [And there is no evidence that there is any evolution going on when bacteria begin to “eat” citrate. Do the bacteria stop eating what they used to eat also, if they later are returned to their earlier, do they not want to eat what they used to eat? Here is a site disputing your one sided studying. “http://www.the-scientist.com/?articles.view/articleNo/45423/title/Similar-Data–Different-Conclusions/”]

    Dear readers, please note that once again Preacher Gerald has foolishly given us an article that actually disagrees with his religious views. This is because he never bothers to read anything, and just posts stuff, thinking that no one is actually going to bother to read it. Unfortunately I already knew about this article. Here’s an actual quote from the article you gave us, Gerald: ““What the new experiment has told us is [that] actually these phenotypes can evolve much more readily than we initially thought,”.

    That article doesn’t refute beneficial mutations!

    Preacher Gerald writes: [Now if what changes made are automatically reversed because of a return to the original environment, then that is not a mutation, it is an adaptation. If a human leaves the USA, and goes to a different country, where the food is different. They will find that they can consume food where
    ever they find themselves. And later when they return to the USA, they will simply pick up where they had left off. We aren’t mutating, we are adapting.]

    I shouldn’t be surprised you would make such a garbage analogy. If a human goes to another country, they are still eating chicken, or beef, or any other food that they could already eat in their own country!

    What would be a major evolutionary change is if we could METABOLIZE something that we cannot right now. For example, we cannot metabolize plant fiber. We eat it, and it passes right through us without being broken down. If we could metabolize it (break it down and remove the nutrients) then that would be an evolutionary change. The E Coli in the Lenski experiment began metabolizing citrate when earlier generations of E Coli could not.

    People drinking cows milk is actually another example of human evolution. Some humans are lactose tolerant, and others are lactose intolerant. It didn’t use to be that way: http://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2012/12/27/168144785/an-evolutionary-whodunit-how-did-humans-develop-lactose-tolerance

    Let the truth set you free from your ancient mythology, Gerald…

    1. “People drinking cows milk is actually another example of human evolution. Some humans are lactose tolerant, and others are lactose intolerant” A little short sighted no? Because there are people who go the opposite. And since it does not take a million years to become tolerant or intolerant, and that the people remain people, that is not evolution. That is either a break down in the mechanism that God made to adapt, or it is one that is working. And there are individuals who due to their parents or them becoming exposed to environmental circumstances, caused that mechanism to break down. I don’t see how you are calling the failing of our bodies or one of our systems an evolutionary process. Our bodies are breaking down from the time we are born. And that is not evolution, that is de-volition. It is just like the evolutionists to try to turn around proof for Creationism, and make it seem like it supports evolution.
      “What would be a major evolutionary change is if we could METABOLIZE something that we cannot right now. For example, we cannot metabolize plant fiber. We eat it, and it passes right through us without being broken down. If we could metabolize it (break it down and remove the nutrients) then that would be an evolutionary change. The E Coli in the Lenski experiment began metabolizing citrate when earlier generations of E Coli could not” You want this to support evolution for you. That is why you don’t see, that it actually supports Creationsism. Here take a look at this. http://www.icr.org/article/bacterial-evolution-actually-design/
      “Dear readers, please note that once again Preacher Gerald has foolishly given us an article that actually disagrees with his religious views.” Dear Tim. I read the article. It was provided, because it was showing scientists themselves about what is happening. Or how it is happening. And it shows that if you don’t know how it is happening, then you can’t make claims for evolution. The evidence could just as well point to Creationism. As the article that I supplied the link for earlier. Tim. You are looking so hard to find holes in what God has done, that you are missing obvious answers. Stop accusing others of doing that you actually are doing. Refusing truth.,

      1. Gerald writes: [A little short sighted no? Because there are people who go the opposite. And since it does not take a million years to become tolerant or intolerant, and that the people remain people, that is not evolution.]

        Humans didn’t used to be lactose tolerant as adults. We have the ancient DNA of ancient humans to confirm that. Now, 1/3 of all humans are. That is an evolutionary change in humans. If you’d only read the article at the link provided in my previous post, I wouldn’t have to spell it out for you now. It’s an example of how the genome changes over time by incorporating beneficial adaptations into the general population. That “the people remain people” doesn’t change the fact that this is evolution in action.

        [That is either a break down in the mechanism that God made to adapt, or it is one that is working.]

        Prove gods exist before trying to credit them for “mechanisms”. On a side note, it’s interesting how a perfect god could have a mechanism “break down” as you said. That’s the great thing about cultist rationalizing – You lot always run over other characteristics of your god creature in your scramble to defend something else. Well done.

        [ I don’t see how you are calling the failing of our bodies or one of our systems an evolutionary process. Our bodies are breaking down from the time we are born. And that is not evolution, that is de-volition.]

        The ability to process lactose as adults does not cause a failing of our bodies. Call any physician in any town you want, and ask them if milk is good for your body or bad for it.

        And, to no one’s surprise, you once again show a lack of understanding about evolution. Aging is NOT evolution. Aging is a natural process that you should google on your own free time. Evolution is a change in the inheritable characteristics of a population of living things over time. One individual does not evolve. A population evolves. Evolution does not happen in one lifetime. It happens over many generations. Despite an untold number of attempts to explain this to you, you still can’t get it right…It’s little wonder you still use pseudo phrases like “de-evolution” in your posts. My hope that you’d have enough pride to educate yourself to a level competent enough for basic conversation about the topic has completely disappeared…

        [It is just like the evolutionists to try to turn around proof for Creationism, and make it seem like it supports evolution.]

        ROFL. More claims of proof for creationism, with no ACTUAL data or evidence provided in your post. What a stunner.

        [You want this to support evolution for you. That is why you don’t see, that it actually supports Creationism. Here take a look at this.]

        Gerald, you creationist sheep. ICR links? How many times do we have to debunk the crap at that website before you stop going there (and only there) for any information about anything. It’s embarrassing for you.

        The only “scientist” to support the claims is Behe (based on the references), the same cultist who had his previous work laughed out of a Pennsylvania courtroom in 2005 during the Kitsmiller vs Dover Area School District trial. His claim that there was nothing new added to the genome, and his claim that no new ability was generated, are stupidly false. That the bacteria could eat citrate, whereas before they couldn’t, is clearly a new ability. This is so insanely simple that it boggles the mind that anyone would try to claim otherwise. The genome changed in multiple places before this ability could occur, so obviously the genome changed. Again, so stupidly simple.

        What the ICR dolts tried to do in their article is make evolutionary changes to the genome, and the methods that the genomes changed, sound like they were not evolutionary pathways. However these evolutionary pathways have been long understood and recognized, and the ICR writers tried to pretend otherwise when they wrote their pseudo science nonsense for you to one day gobble up.

        [ Dear Tim. I read the article. It was provided, because it was showing scientists themselves about what is happening. Or how it is happening. And it shows that if you don’t know how it is happening, then you can’t make claims for evolution.]

        If you read it you would’ve known that the conclusions (evolution happened) was the same. It says so right there in the article. They know how it happened, where it happened on the genome, and even roughly what generation the new adaption began to occur. That’s all knows, which is why it is easily an example of evolution.

        [The evidence could just as well point to Creationism.]

        Really. How? How can the evidence be interpreted to be the result of a god creature (that you still haven’t proven even exists) made all that happen. Make sure you list all your empirical data for us, preacher…

        [You are looking so hard to find holes in what God has done, that you are missing obvious answers. Stop accusing others of doing that you actually are doing. Refusing truth.]

        The holes are so obvious Gerald that it is a miracle you haven’t fallen into one in all the years you’ve been trying to defend your baseless cult.

  5. Tim, nothing has been explained. You and all the others have failed to contest my arguments, reiterating the same hear say, and calling it evidence. And it is not. It is hear say. My arguments tear holes in the evolution theory, else you would supply proof. You claim there are transitional fossils. And you throw fossils into a bag and pull out the best and say here they are. But what you have done is supplied what is thought to be. You don’t even have complete fossils showing the end of one species and the beginning of a new species. It would be like when a car manufacturer has decided to change the appearance of a car model. They go in and change this and change that. You can see all the old and see which old was replaced with the new. But the scientists for evolution have not done this. In fact many of the honest evolutionists have actually stated that with all the fossils that have uncovered in the recent years after Darwin, it looks even less like the theory of evolution is correct. And that is precisely why evolutionists are pushing now the micro evolution. Because of the lack of evidence for macro evolution. Now at least they can say, here is evolution. the birds beak is longer. Hoping that the astute learner will not remember that evolution before was how one species became a totally different species. And not remain the same species but looking a little different. Stop fooling yourself. You are out of your depth and starting to drown. You need the truth to hang onto. And you won’t find it in evolution. You will find it in the Bible.

  6. Nick … in my free time, I am actually currently trying to pursue a course that mathematically models … mutations (!) … along with other aspects of evolutionary dynamics.
    Although I don’t for a second doubt evolution, I’ve always found that being able to fit some Math around complex processes like evolution helps get a lot of clarity about what they tend to mean/ imply & how the mechanisms associated with such processes might play out.

    Here’s the link, you might find it interesting.
    http://nptel.ac.in/courses/103101127/
    Its by an Indian technical university (IIT Bombay) so please excuse the accent … but its pretty good once you get past the accent. I am sure you could find similar courses on maybe MIT OCW (their biochem engineering department courses) or similar platforms to see how Mathematics can be used to explain & understand mutations and other aspects of evolutionary dynamics.

    The guy recommends a books as well – Evolutionary dynamics – Exploring the equations of life (Martin Nowak). He claims the book is easy to understand and the Math in the book is tractable.

  7. How can you formulate a program, using false factors, and misunderstood hypothesis’s? Garbage in garbage will come in. Mutants are nothing but a breakdown of what is programmed on the DNA of each organism. And beaks changing shape on birds, or bacteria adapting to assimilate citrates, does not mean that the organism is a mutant. It still is the same organism that has adapted to circumstances.

  8. Great then. Help Tim out. Why is it logical to assume that even though man has only observed that each species reproduces their own kind, and that this has been observed to happen as long we have been observing organisms, say for over 6000 years, and that this pattern has never been seen to be broken. And because of this unbroken pattern, over such a long period of time, we can logically assume that this same pattern will be what will be happening on down far into the future.
    Now if we can extrapolate that the same pattern will hold true far into the future, we should be able to assume and logically so, that the pattern we have witnessed over all this time, would have been the same pattern that way back in the past. Why is it logical for the scientists trying to prove evolution to ignore this fact by instead suggesting an assumption that goes completely against what scientific observation has shown to as fact?

    1. We have directly observed the small changes within species that can occur within a lifetime. We have seen what can happen naturally over a slightly longer timeframe because some species have received artificial selection by farmers, dog breeders, etc. which speeds everything up. We have reliable documentation of the extensive changes that have taken place in the duration of our written history. In all of that, we have seen no barrier at all to the extent of the potential changes in a species when time is not an issue. Whatever the limits of a “kind” are (and these have never been properly defined) nothing stops a plant or animal from changing, and changing, and changing, until it no longer fits within those limits. This is the extrapolation of the unchecked evolution we’ve observed.

      We have seen two segregated populations of the same species grow so far apart that their combined offspring is sterile, and eventually combined offspring is impossible. We have seen similar phenomena in species that are very closely related genetically, like horses and donkeys (mules) and lions and tigers (ligers). We can see that once two populations are permanently separated like this they are free to grow as different as their environments allow, and the arbitrary yet nebulous constraints of a “kind” hold no power over them.

      1. “We have directly observed the small changes within species that can occur within a lifetime”
        Yes, SmartLx. we have observed this happening within that same species or organism, and happening not over millions and millions of years. And these changes are initiated by an intelligence superior to theirs. And should that intelligence wishes to reverse engineer that change they are able to do so. Any other changes that are not due to outsourced breeding, is shown to be a perfectly natural already programmed response to the proper sequence of coding that was designed into the DNA of each species. This specific open source programming would allow that species to benefit from each of that same organism of the same species. So that colors and sizes is made possible without allowing each species to loose its own identity of what it was created to be in the beginning.

        1. Pure assertion all the way through with respect to the intelligence/designer, except when/if referring to human breeders which were the extreme minority of the changes I referred to. You finally acknowledge that mutations can be reversed and therefore beneficial mutations are possible, conceding a real creationist bulwark, but wave it away by saying “God can do that”. And your only defense of the idea of a “kind” is an assertion that there are limits built into the “design” of the organism. No such limits have been identified or demonstrated; the only barrier to our observation of larger changes is the small amount of time we’ve been able to observe.

          1. No, I am referring to the breeders. They changed only that permitted for them to change. Not one has changed one organism to another kind. They have always stayed what God programmed them to be. And locked the door on the rest. And the rest are not being produced by some kind of evolutionary process. It it truly what you call evolution why is it not the kind of evolution that the early evolutionists were referring to and having to last millions of years? And why do the “evolutionary changes so easy to reverse when the circumstances are reversed? I know you don’t know. But I do. It is because God had programmed these abilities into the DNA of each organism. Citrate eating bacteria. Please. God gave them that ability. All it needed to do is have a gene turn on and it happened. And after all it still is able to eat what it would ingest before. So it added another item to its menu. We do that all the time. So are you being so naive at to think that we are in the process of evolution? People have eaten bark from trees. Grass, even dirt and hair. And although they don’t fare well upon that diet. They still have done so. And they aren’t evolving.
            No such limits. Please. The scientists have been trying to make bacteria into other organism for the last 50 years or so, only to be denied that ability. That is because they can only go as far as God has set up, when He first created each organism. And those same scientists would be better off allowing the God who gave them the wisdom, access to their lives so that He could lead them into making discoveries that they haven’t even conceived of yet. They tie His hands by denying Him to their lives. And so do you.
            But. Why are you straying from my arguments. Explain to me why you assume that even though it has been observed that all life that comes from a previous life is imbued with programming that the new life will need to function, that a completely new life could come and do what evolutionists claim with out ever having had a predecessor?
            That is it. That is all. Deal with this for now.

            1. No, you do not get to let 80% of your arguments stand by demanding that I only focus on one.

              Breeders have not changed an organism into what you would consider another “kind” (stop thinking this term means anything to non-creationists) because they have only been working for about ten thousand years, and they would need millions. If the changes made to wolves and later dogs continued a hundred times longer, the result would be unrecognisable as either, and certainly couldn’t breed with either. Scientists have not been trying to evolve bacteria into anything else because they know that took hundreds of millions of years longer than any other transition, so you pulled that claim out of your arse.

              You’re literally misquoting me now; I didn’t say what you wrote in quotes. Anyway, the gene for producing the protein citT for eating citrate in aerobic conditions was not simply turned on during the experiment, it did not exist beforehand. The term for it is “novel”.

              I take it your final question ignores evolution altogether and concerns abiogenesis again. At this point I doubt you’ll ever comprehend this, but when one does not already believe in a god, life being created by a hypothetical, unsubstantiated yet all-powerful entity does not seem more likely than one of a variety of hypothetical natural mechanisms which had a billion years and the whole planet’s worth of materials to work with. Your central argument is that the god is a more likely cause even if there’s no other evidence for the god, but it just doesn’t look that way to atheists so no matter how triumphant you feel every time you hit Post Comment you’re never any closer to bringing anyone around. All you’re doing is reassuring yourself, so how much do you need that?

              1. “Breeders have not changed an organism into what you would consider another “kind” (stop thinking this term means anything to non-creationists)”. I’m sorry but it seems as if you are making demands. I’m merely using a term that has been used just like any other term in the Bible. Would you have any problem with me using all of the words that the Bible has written therein? Or just the one word kind? I know other evolutionists who have no problem understanding the meaning. But it does kind of refer to all species and all organisms at the same time. But really. This one word is not your problem. Your problem is with the illogical way that the evolutionists try to ignore the fact, the proven, unbroken pattern of a fact, is that each organism, simple or complex, has only been shown to have come from that same parent organism. They have never been seen to have been come from an organism that did not resemble them. That is the main crux of where the evolutionists have their problem. Because they have invented a theory that contradicts what we have observed for over 6000 years.
                Your attempt to make mutation into something that benefits the evolutionists theory, will not hold water either. Although you want it to mean a form of adaptation, adaptation is still now evolution. Those changes as you agreed with me on will reverse when the natural circumstances revert to the previous circumstances. But for the mutant cell that is a cell that has been damaged, unless the cell is repaired or is turned off by the cells own natural defense, then that cell could actually cause so much damage that the organism will also suffer. Which you probably have seen with all the experiments that atheists have made on organisms like the fruit flies and bacteria. And anyway, you know that the claim of evolution over millions of years is what evolution required before. And now that it is being shown that evolution is bunk, then the millions of years for evolution to work is being dragged down because of the backtracking being done. You can not prove this one thing also. You can not prove that the ability to change in that organism is not something already programmed into the cell from the time that that organism was created on this earth. You can not show that it is due to a mutant gene. In fact if it was done by a mutant gene then why is that adaptation reversible so easy, in that same organism in that same life time. Once again you are being short sighted on your arguments. You are providing no help for your evolution. You are dragging it down, by having questions pop up that show that evolution could not be what the evolutionists claim.
                “it did not exist beforehand” Prove it. Unless it was intelligently designed and installed, then there is no proof that a cell will produce a different gene that that cell has not been programmed to produce. That means that it was there all the time. I could not find anything about a gene change for citrates, but for plastics. And in this they are saying that, “This discovery led geneticist Susumu Ohno in a paper published in April 1984 to speculate that the gene for one of the enzymes, 6-aminohexanoic acid hydrolase, had come about from the combination of a gene duplication event with a frameshift mutation.[3] Ohno suggested that many unique new genes have evolved this way.”
                Once again it is a pure speculation. They are not sure as to whether that gene existed and was turned on or as the speculation supposes. And in any case, why would this be called an evolution, when it is not taking millions of years to happen. We are not talking about a simple change in length of hair, or sizes of beaks. Which also happens rapidly and the reverse is also fast. But a change in being able to break down plastic or nylon, if that gene was not readily available for access then how could it happen so fast. And also, who said that they have never been able to break it down before. Were there experiments done to show that they didn’t before and now they do. It doesn’t look like it. Because it was found happening on its own.
                Here take a look at this. “A 1995 paper showed that scientists have also been able to induce another species of bacterium, Pseudomonas aeruginosa, to evolve the capability to break down the same nylon byproducts in a laboratory by forcing them to live in an environment with no other source of nutrients. The P. aeruginosa strain did not seem to use the same enzymes that had been utilized by the original Flavobacterium strain.[5]”
                This is not an evolution event. It is an event of preferences. Just like you have your favorite foods, but will when necessary eat your less favorite if that is the only thing to eat. It is far more logical to say that the same happens when there is only one thing to. The bacteria was designed and manufactured to be able to eat different things. That is an innate ability given to the bacteria by the Creator. And they still remain bacteria through it all.
                http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-4555014/Plastic-eating-microbes-evolved-ocean.html

                But the bacteria solved this problem when the amplification event also moved the gene sequence to a different place in the bacterial chromosome, where a different but pre-existing promoter could regulate it. Unlike the original one, it appears that the new promoter does not have an “oxygen off” switching mode. Instead, it allowed expression of citT in the presence of oxygen so that the bacteria successfully imported enough citrate to grow.
                http://www.icr.org/article/bacterial-evolution-actually-design/

                1. The Bible predates zoology, let alone taxonomy, and in order to meaningfully discuss biology as currently understood, Biblical terms like “kind” must be defined in modern terms. The field of baraminology exists to do just this, and has not succeeded, but you’re not even using what it has to offer.

                  Jumping past the same “kind” argument again, and the usual claims that evolution is kaput, as soon as you ask me to prove that something is not the case (e.g. that all change is not pre-programmed) you are not advancing your case at all. Evolutionary theory does not exist to disprove God’s influence, it exists to explain the natural development of life from simple forms. To establish the existence of God based on evolutionary change you must (for a start) prove that it is fully pre-programmed, directly contradicting naturalistic explanations.

                  Mutations are not just deduced from the visible changes in an organism, they are directly observed in the genome. There is no controversy over what is and isn’t a mutation. You can claim the mutations that contradict your axiom by being beneficial are something else, but you’ll be demonstrably wrong and you won’t convince anyone. Does either of those even matter to you?

                  The Lenski paper says the gene relevant to citrate was new, however it came about. They still have frozen samples of the earlier population before the gene developed, because they take frozen samples at regular intervals. There is no detectable pre-programming to produce the gene before the gene emerges. You can claim the programming is there if it makes you feel better.

                  The analogy to humans and their favourite foods is useless because humans are omnivores. We already have the ability to digest anything with the right chemical components to sustain us. The E.coli bacteria that first encountered the citrate in the solution had no way to utilise it; its descendants many generations on had evolved that ability because as you wrote, their genes were literally in a different place. This is evolution at the genetic level.

                  1. SmartLX You commented “Evolutionary theory does not exist to disprove God’s influence”. Evolutionary theories can’t even prove itself let alone disprove God. So we don’t need to do anything to disprove Evolution. The scientists who are pushing evolution are doing quite a good job on their own to disprove evolution, by not providing proof for evolution. I read the article that one of your members wrote, trying to cast a different spin on the lack of evidence for evolution because there are no transition fossils. Stating that it is a combination of all the sciences that coming together provide the damning evidence to bring down intelligent design. And support evolution. But that is hogwash as much as the theory of evolution is. The theory of evolution fails the scientific method in providing enough compelling proof to make it and keep it as a viable alternative for how got and became as it is. The theory of evolution ignores the existing evidence that is observed every day and fails to fit into this evidence. And of course this evidence is the fact that we don’t see any different organism being produced from each organism other than what the organism is where the new organism comes from. We have never seen anything but a chick being produced from a chicken. A sheep only has lambs. Camels, only camels. And humans have only given birth to humans. This pattern has never been broken. It would be completely reasonable to assume and not be amiss that this same pattern will continue on into the near and far distant future. So it is completely illogical and outside the Scientific model to assume that all organism had ever been produced in any other fashion. It is more logical to not believe that apes ever came from a different organism than another ape. And even more logical to reject that human came from anything other than another human.
                    And again you wrote, “The Bible predates zoology, let alone taxonomy,” Thank you for pointing this out. So I would encourage you to heed the information packed within the Bible.
                    I’m sure this has more than enough reason to assume that, “There is no detectable pre-programming to produce the gene before the gene emerges. You can claim the programming is there if it makes you feel better”
                    It doesn’t make me feel any worse. Not as much as it should you, should you decide to reject the obvious. Because as in the case of each organism only producing their own offspring, so is it a fact that each cell comes already programmed to function. Cells are micro habitats all on their own. Why would you not accept this fact except you refuse to accept the obvious. As I said it is more logical to accept that each organism produces itself. It is obvious that life can only come from life. And it is empirically logical to assume that any cell that comes, comes from a cell that had life itself. Because when a cell is produced it is produced to function. and it can not function without the DNA and the programming that has to be already on board for it to survive. Or are you going to hold to the possibility that that cell was able to wait around in some sort of stasis, waiting for the DNA to form, which would have had to be after the cell had modified it self to be able to have all the mechanism that would have been necessary to allow the DNA to work. Please don’t tell me that you can’t see, can’t understand that this is entirely impossible.

                    1. I’ll say it as many times as I have to: not knowing how something could happen is not evidence that it’s “entirely impossible”. This is a logical fallacy every time you say it and it gets easier to spot every time.

                      As it happens, the going hypothesis is that DNA or RNA formed first, and developed the ability to form a membrane after first utilising naturally forming membranes, e.g. plain old bubbles.

              2. “I take it your final question ignores evolution altogether and concerns abiogenesis again. At this point I doubt you’ll ever comprehend this, but when one does not already believe in a god, life being created by a hypothetical, unsubstantiated yet all-powerful entity does not seem more likely than one of a variety of hypothetical natural mechanisms which had a billion years and the whole planet’s worth of materials to work with.” It is not ignoring evolution. One depends upon the other. And the evolution is altogether ruled out if it can not show that life did not have to come from God. Hence up pops up abiogenesis from the evolutionists. And since the proof shows that life could only have come from life, and that all programming onto the DNA of each cells is and has been only seen to have happened when that cell is produced. Neither of these factors have ever been shown by the evolutionists to even be possible with out life of some sort to have been there before a new cell arrives. To continue to dismiss my argument and refuse to try and address it, only shows that you are incapable to do so. It would be far better to admit that my argument has merit. And you’d like to look into it more. Show how life could have come from nothing or abiogenesis, instead of just ignoring the fact that it only happens from life. And show how a cell could have received programming even though it has been observed only that all programming has always come from previous life. Anything else is ignoring a hole in the theory. And holes means that the theory has not been thought through completely

                1. If evolution is ruled out without abiogenesis, and if there is no hope for a workable theory of abiogenesis, you sure spend a lot of time attacking evolution for no reason, huh?

                  Life exists, so if there’s no god then life must have come from something else, and even if there is a god then life still could have come from something else. If one doesn’t both believe in a god and take it as literal gospel that the god created life, one cannot rely on that claim. I’m not disputing that we don’t know exactly how it could have happened, though there are several hypotheses. But if you argue that it didn’t happen because you and I don’t know how it could happen, this is by definition an argument from ignorance and should not be accepted by either of us. That’s why I dismiss it: it is categorically an argument which cannot possibly be sound.

          2. And you know that I did not admit that mutations can be reversed. I corrected you telling you your mistake is thinking that an adaptation that has been already programmed into the DNA of each organism, is not an mutant evolutionizing event. That organism remains the same as it was before. If it was truly having cells malfunctioning, then those cells would be mutant cells. It would not be an evolved mutant organism. And this would determine the whole question to the debate. An adaptation that is able to be reversed by reversing the circumstance of a normal change would be an adaptation and certainly not evolution. But a cellular degradation will not change back until that is phased out by either death of that organism or by a combination with another of that same organism that overcomes the cellular degradation with a stronger healthier cells.

            1. Sorry, a reverse mutation is a commonly observed event which meets every criteria for a mutation, and many of the mutations you refer to as degradations are among those which are reversible. You can redefine all the terms all you like to make yourself right, but again you lose the power to persuade anyone but yourself.

      2. “We have directly observed the small changes within species that can occur within a lifetime.”
        How is this any kind of evidence. I can’t see how you can transfer what you say is evidence for evolution today to what the specific idea of evolution was back in the early days of evolution. Although Darwin, was only dealing with what the way species was happening within species, it was blown out to mean that all species started due to only one simple organism. The evolution that is in question is not the one that one kind makes all of that kind. But that one organism made all organic organism. Actually that on inorganic made all organic. And the assumption that this is possible is clearly out of the realm of true science. And you want proof for this. I can give you that proof. Proof that you only say is available born from the imaginations of the atheist and clueless evolutionist. My proof is what has been observed. That every specific kind of any organism, only produces itself. There are no instances observed, either actual or one that can be traced from the past that can lead to any conclusion that all life came out of inorganic or out of nowhere, or that one organism evolved into all the specific kinds of organisms. I was told by another, that what the Creationist wants is for the atheist to find an organism coming out of the water and changing before our eyes in order for us to believe that evolution is true. You see they are not even referring to the adaptation inside organisms. They are talking about the complete change of form from one organism to another. And inorder for anyone to believe this, yes. We need to be able to see this in person, on tape, or at least others who are eyewitnesses to these occurrences. You said, another speculation, that it only had to happen at least once. But here’s the gist of the matter, until it has been recorded to have happen once then it can not be assumed to have happened. That is because of all the occurrences of it happening the other way that has been observed by all the millions of witnesses. Change in species does not equate to change from one species to another. That is not the pattern observed down through time.

  9. And once again that is not what the evolutionists had in mind when they declared that one organism had changed over and over again leaving new species in its wake, as it traversed time until today. That is not what we have witnessed. We witnessed or observed that whenever a species or a kind or any kind of organism gave birth it produced another of its kind. We have seen this pattern over and over again for over 6000 years. This pattern has never been observed to have been broken. And today what ever “new species” you are declaring to be, they are still within the same kind or species regardless whether they can reproduce or not another of its kind. Which is in fact an event that has been initiated by an intelligence outside and above those kinds or species. That intelligence that interfered with the natural order of things. And I am sure that should that intelligence once again sticks their noses where they don’t belong, that there is a chance of out breeding that which they had bread. And once again it took an intelligence to do this. Just as it took an intelligence to cause the life of each and every kind of organism or species. Both simple and complex.

  10. “Humans didn’t used to be lactose tolerant as adults. We have the ancient DNA of ancient humans to confirm that.” How do you know when this intolerance began. And my father used to drink milk without any problems and when he got older he became lactose intolerant. And none of my siblings or I never became lactose intolerant even though there were seven of us. So the idea that somehow an evolution occurred in our family. This is not an evolutionary caused problem but one of when some damaged has occurred. Maybe even due to the constant inbreeding that God had us stop when it began to be a problem. And who says that all humans never were lactose intolerant? Were you there to look at the medical records. Humans did not drink cows milk in the beginning. They probably didn’t have to drink milk until sometime after the flood, when God allowed man to begin eating meat. You all are reaching for ridiculous, trying to get some kind of traction to prove evolution. You must be desperate.
    You ask for me to prove God. That proof has already been given with the way this universe was created. Life itself is proof that God is. It is only because of your unwillingness to accept this evidence that all points to the fact that every thing has the imprint of God’s fingerprint that shows it all belongs to God. And the failure of science to provide any other logical way of how it all happened allows the factor of God to be seriously considered and logically accepted as the only possible for everything to have become.
    Tim you write in the paragraph that talks about the “dolts” “However these evolutionary pathways have been long understood and recognized”
    You need to be joking. Or purposely trying to mislead. There is nothing understood of the evolutionary pathways of the. Because evolution has never been proven enough to be understood itself let along something that is claimed to refer as evolutionary pathways. Let’s stick to trying to prove evolution first and when that comes around then attack something that couldn’t have occurred because there is no such thing as evolution.
    Tim this is from you. “If you read it you would’ve known that the conclusions (evolution happened) was the same. It says so right there in the article. They know how it happened, where it happened on the genome, and even roughly what generation the new adaption began to occur. That’s all knows, which is why it is easily an example of evolution.”
    Now let me ask you, how many people do you think existed at that time? How can you assure others reading your post or the one that suggests that lactose intolerance was an evolution, which makes no sense, because an intolerance would not be beneficial to life and would certainly be instead a breakdown in the process. As I said before there was damage.
    And this article itself says it is still a mystery. So to proclaim something that is still a mystery as support for evolution is ludicrous.

  11. “Really. How? How can the evidence be interpreted to be the result of a god creature (that you still haven’t proven even exists) made all that happen. Make sure you list all your empirical data for us, preacher…” Really right back at you. You haven’t even proven that evolution is true. And now you are surprised that I still proclaim that God did it. I mean for hundreds of years the acceptance for evolution is no where near what many are trying to get it. You don’t have proof for evolution that goes beyond hear say. And I have plenty of evidence that suggests that all was designed. That has been stated by Evolutionists and Creationists. The only thing is the Evolutionists back track and say “but it’s not possible”. Even though the proof exists. You want to deny God. Hum, go figure. You just don’t want a God to be around to tell you when you are wrong.

  12. Dear SmartLx. Tell me what are the smallest particles that we know of? Has any of these particles been show to have the life that would be needed to jump start a cell. Where is the life to the cell coming from. We know about these particles and yet fail to understand life. Especially how one life could pass from itself to another. From one cell to another. Surely since we can see that one cell coming from another immediately has life. So the life that it receives must come from the parent cell. But how is that life imparted? So unless there is something smaller than that which we have up to now been able to find, then you and all the other atheists are with your back up against the wall. You say that there is no God, and won’t believe that He is because you won’t accept the physical evidence that can point only to Him, and yet you accept that life is even though you can’t find out where that life comes from. It seems that you have ruled out all other possible explanations and the one you refuse is the only one left. That is God. The God of the universe. The God of my life. The God of millions of Christians alive today, and of millions who have died proclaiming that God is real. And He is the God of many a used to Atheist who, at least refused to just take the word of someone who said there wasn’t God, and who instead set out to know for sure. And now they are Christians. Someone once said that a stranger is simply a friend that you haven’t met yet. Well, let me tell you, God is not real to you yet, because you haven’t met Him yet. Go and meet Him. He is waiting your answer to the door of your heart. He is standing close to you. And He desires to present Himself to you. I’m telling you, because I know. He presented Himself to me. And more individuals then you would like to know of. And right now they all are praying for you and every other individual who need to meet Jesus.

  13. Living tissue is still made of the smallest known particles, because all matter is. Life is a function of the interactions between a very large number of these particles. We don’t have the science to do this, but if you were to zoom in on your own body until the view is just three molecules wide, those three molecules on a cell somewhere are not by themselves doing anything which qualifies as “life”, and yet they are part of a living being. Life is not an ethereal quantity or quality which drifts between cells, it is the answer to the question of whether organic material is currently operating as such. When an organism dies nothing leaves it, it just stops. The analogy to God is poor to say the least.

    The rest is just the same old preaching, but I do want to pick up on the bit about atheists converting to Christianity. That does happen, but it happens the other way around far more often, even if you take all religions into account. They’ve counted.

    1. SmartLx. What is impossible is that which is impossible. You cannot change that. That is why the word insanity became useful. It’s impossible for a bird to fly on its own into outer space. And when there is no evidence that supports something considered impossible, then it remains impossible. Let me ask you some of you are saying that life came from nothing, others, that it came from chemicals. If life came from either one. it came and made its way into being a cell. So if that is the case why aren’t anymore cells coming from nothing or from chemicals. And say life did come from chemicals, how did it do it. Where were the chemicals? Were there other chemicals? Most assuredly there would have been. What prevented those chemicals from mixing into each other? What brought the necessary chemicals that would eventually become life, together. Were those chemicals alive? How did the chemicals have DNA? They would have had to have DNA in some form or other, because we know that that is the only way for cells to have its DNA, and that is the only thing that directs functioning. So what told the chemicals what to do? How to function? When the almost life that is being haled as a big step for science, it didn’t do it by those chemicals laying around by them selves. Those chemicals couldn’t have just separated from all the other chemicals laying around in a laboratory and accidentally come to the other necessary chemicals and become exposed to whatever spark that caused those chemicals to coalesce and become life. And then how did it develop the DNA storage device? And where did the programming come from to store on the DNA? It all had to have happened together to allow that cell to survive. And then to go on and make other cells. But where did that first cell get its DNA and its programming. I’m afraid that the only way a cell could have come to life was with the assistance of some kind of life. One cell to another or God giving that life.
      And there are Christians who do leave off believing in Christ. But if you look at the main reasons it is because of dissatisfaction of how things are going in their lives. And then it happens little by little that they leave. For the Atheists to leave Atheism is because of them learning that what they once believed they found that it wasn’t true. And I don’t know if you bothered to check it out, but many times a Christian that left Christ, often returns to accepting Christ and they most of the times, do not leave again. But the Atheists who leave Atheism do not return to Atheism. They may not be Christians, but they do not go back to accepting Evolution.

      1. We know why it’s impossible for a bird to fly into space. Above a certain altitude the air is too thin for any bird’s wings to provide lift, or of course for the bird to breathe and therefore keep flapping. This is the specific limitation that precludes the achievement. There is no known limitation on any of the things regarding life which you are claiming are impossible.

        I don’t know the answers to most of the questions you ask, but to assert either impossibility or your alternative explanation because a how or why question is unanswered is the same argument from ignorance you’ve had since the beginning. (Yes, I link to it manually every time.) One that I can answer with some confidence is why we’re not seeing entirely new life emerge all the time. All life is related and therefore the product of a single event in the history of the world, which suggests that favourable conditions are unfathomably rare. Nowadays the conditions probably don’t exist at all because the Earth is so different; for one thing, the existing life is so ubiquitious that it probably interferes.

        I did read the end of the article on conversion and deconversion which attempted to explain the discrepancy by saying that many deconverts return to faith later in life. The author disclosed his own faith around that point. He could not, however, bring himself to say that the returning believers made up the difference completely, and the study did not concern itself with people who converted and lost faith later. It does mention that regular church-goers are the least likely believers to lose faith, but church attendance is undeniably falling so that shield is inexorably failing.

    2. And SmartLx. Until you can show what real life is made from, you can’t expect anyone to accept what you say is your idea of what life is. As you would probably realize, that is if you allowed yourself the time to do so, is that what is causing or who is deciding what those smallest of particles, (which we can not prove, are the smallest particles because until the microscope was developed, what we were able to see with the “naked eye”, was thought to be the smallest particles), are going to end up being engineered to become.
      And this, “The analogy to God is poor to say the least.” is just plain you not willing to admit that there is anyone bigger and badder then we are. Are you not willing to admit that there could be other beings in this universe, I mean, when you are willing to accept the possibility that life could have o happened by it self at least once, and you do this with out any proof that it could happen at least once, then you should be able to accept the fact that life could be some where else, because you have our presence, as actual proof to base this assumption. Therefore it would not be out of the realm of possibility, for there to be life somewhere else. And if there is life somewhere else, then how did that life become? And why would it be beyond imagination that that life could have become so godlike that we are because they made it so? And then if you are willing to make this not so great leap of faith, then why is not God possible. Especially when all of life is so apparently well designed?

  14. “As it happens, the going hypothesis is that DNA or RNA formed first, and developed the ability to form a membrane after first utilising naturally forming membranes, e.g. plain old bubbles”
    Yea, and how’s that working for them? Out of all the attempts that RNA and DNA had to form on their own, over all these number of years, why hasn’t it happened again? And all you need to do is remember that this DNA and RNA, and RNA is what was engineered, by intelligent beings, making what ever was made. Nothing happened naturally. An intelligence is engineering the RNA in it’s simplest form. And there is a good chance there was some protein or some other form of already provided life that made the RNA possible. All you said goes to support the Intelligent Design theory, and not evolution.

    1. Experiments in abiogenesis mechanics have been happening on and off for less than one hundred years. The real event had one billion years (ten million times as long) and the combined resources of the entire planet in which to occur. A full occurrence of abiogenesis in a lab by now would have been a huge surprise, in this context. A lot of creationists assume that if abiogenesis is possible at all then it should be easy.

      1. Aren’t you going to apologize for forgetting that this statement, “Experiments in abiogenesis mechanics have been happening on and off for less than one hundred years. The real event had one billion years (ten million times as long”, is a speculation and “back engineered” as a possibility, (a poor one), but is one possible speculation. I say back engineered because there is nothing today that we can actually use as a basis to guide us as to formulate how anything was back then. Therefore we must use what is available to try to formulate an assumption as to how it was back then. And this is where creationism and intelligent design, receives it’s evidence. Because, we can use what we see today to form our theory. Therefore since we don’t see any organism transforming into a different organism, like a protozoa into a banana, or a banana, into a monkey,(monkeys like bananas, so maybe they do because they used to be a banana). We don’t see this. But we do see, each kind or each organism only producing itself. And we have seen this for thousands of years. It has happened for so long, without any kind of change that it is a pattern. And if what has happened for all the time we have been able to observe, then it is logical that what we see happening today, is what we can assume to happen in the near to distant future. And this is the reason that we can logically assume that is how things worked far into the distant past. And to assume otherwise is illogical. There are no instances to substantiate this formulation of speculation.

  15. Abiogenesis is not possible. It could not have happened. Chemicals could not have simply separated from all other chemicals and then find a place to gather together and wait all those billions of years for all the circumstances to become just right so that they could what? Die? Of course that life would have died. How could it have developed the DNA. How could it have gotten the programming to tell it what to do? Whey even the simple fact of putting together the strands of DNA would have needed programming to do so. Where is all this programming supposed to have come from? Life less, mind less chemicals?
    As I have repeatedly said, you and all the other atheists do not know how to reasonably use your logic. You repeatedly ignore the impossible to go gallivanting through insane to try to get to what you want to assume is right. But there is no evidence to encourage you to follow this course of your hypothesis. Everything points to the impossibility of your Hypothesis.

  16. And as I’ve repeatedly said, the moment your argument includes a “how” question I’m not supposed to be able to answer (let alone several) the whole thing is an argument from ignorance and will not convince anyone who knows what that is.

    Beyond that straightforward shortcoming, it appears even weaker when hypotheses do exist in response to each of these questions. The elements for life (carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen, phosphorus and sulphur) were on Earth in abundance because it’s partly made of them. They were mixed by the wind, waves and tectonic activity for about one billion years until the circumstances really were just right to make a quantity of a simple arrangement that absorbed materials around it to make more of itself. And most of it probably did “die” but a little bit of it didn’t, probably because it found itself in natural membranes (e.g. bubbles) where it was protected. A strand of RNA or early DNA formed from amino acids and other simple compounds (again, just the right circumstances) had the very simple blueprint for each unit, and because even the minority that survived were tiny and multitudinous and the process was imperfect, some came out differently than others and their “descendants” began to compete. Since the competition rewarded complexity as it translated to new functions, complexity increased and has been doing so ever since.

    Again this is a very broad hypothesis and one of several, but in a situation where even if your questions have no answers your argument is invalid, any potential answer makes it seem even worse.

    1. Argument from ignorance eh. What is ignorant about doubting speculation that is built around unfounded and poorly thought through, faulty reasoning. As I said before. You and other speculate that chemicals could have somehow mixed and boom life.
      Now let’s build upon that line of thought. Let’s consider what has been done to build this touted first RNA, or DNA, or almost one. But let’s see. Even if it is, It was an intelligence, that has engineered it. The intelligence gathered the chemicals. The intelligence figured out which chemicals and how much of each chemical was to be used. This along with countless hours of research and all the numbers of trial and error’s. All due to an intelligence. And that is not even the real thing yet. That is not “us” yet.
      So once again, as asked earlier. How did these chemicals apply themselves? Or what, if not an intelligence, choose these chemicals, mix these chemicals? And how did these chemicals isolate themselves from all the other chemicals? There were chemicals that would have cancelled out the others after all. Chemicals that would have diluted the other chemicals. Chemicals that would have interfered and even destroyed life. So how did the good chemicals become for one matter, and how did they gather together to get life on its way? Now you say that this rationale is an “argument of ignorance”. Okay. That’s your opinion. But if you don’t mind, give me your rationale that leads you to believe that the rationale that leads me to my opinion is not more rational then yours. Sure. Sure, we are both able to have opinions. But, we both know that we both can’t be right. So, go through your processes that show what I have offered, to be of little importance, or how the life formed as you claim, was able to circumvent these, to me apparently impossible possibilities.

  17. But how were those elements suspended. If all the elements or at least most of them were in abundance, then they all were and had to have mixed up, if indeed there were elements, in the beginning. No one knows for sure. All they know if you are an evolutionist that there was something like a big bang. Where all was supposedly made. Another theory left unproven. But you can’t prove how those chemicals came together, having to had maintained there individual chemical structures and then come together all at once to do what? Boom. And you forget that for every one of those supposedly the beginning of life elements, there had to be a whole lot of more chemicals that were not conducive for life. And even with that the theory is that all this combined under the water at hot vents. How were these chemicals supposed to stay in one place in order for them to combine? You go from bad to worse, as we analyze and break it down ever further. It looks even more impossible as you get right down to the nitty, ritty. Really the evolutionists and the atheists need to come right out and say that once again science has made a mistake with evolution. And that they just don’t have the evidence to back up any of the theories that make up the theory of Evolution. So save face and just admit it is a theory in jeopardy .
    SmartLx. “They were mixed by the wind, waves and tectonic activity for about one billion years until the circumstances really were just right to make a quantity of a simple arrangement that absorbed materials around it to make more of itself. And most of it probably did “die” but a little bit of it didn’t, probably because it found itself in natural membranes (e.g. bubbles) where it was protected. A strand of RNA or early DNA formed from amino acids and other simple compounds (again, just the right circumstances) had the very simple blueprint for each unit…” This is what you said. Don’t you even see the holes that you leave wide open in your logic? Where is the evidence that “they were mixed by the wind, waves and tectonic activity” How do you know? Have they not tried for years and years to get life from scum? And they finally decided that more than likely it all happened under the water and the vents. And you say no the wind did it? And then it was protected by “bubbles” Ok, where is the research that shows that any RNA or DNA, survived in the protection of a bubble? And now there is what you call a “simple blue print” Yea, I know you wish you could take this back. Because I’m going to ask you, Where did the blue print come from?
    It has taken the researchers years to make “the savior of atheism” a simple RNA. I don’t know why it is heralded as support for evolution. It was formed by intelligent beings, not by natural means. It had chemicals that didn’t exist then, manufactured in a lab. And the environment was not even what probably not what was way back then. (nothing was, but we let that ride for now). SmartLx. You are not living up to the smart in your name. You are reaching for straws, just so you have something to hang on to as you slide to your death, for refusing to accept what God has given us to prove that He made us and everything else. There is just no way that life could have come to be without an intelligence to guide and keep it. Look at how each cell, needs to pass on the life energy and programming to the next cell. And then to the next. Only life could have given life. And God life incarnate, made the cells to sustain all life and when He did it, He created life as it needed to be so that it didn’t need evolution.

  18. And competely ignoring what I just wrote, the second word out of your keyboard is “how”. Responding to these is therefore merely for your own education, as I doubt many others have followed us this far, but since the arguments from ignorance are streaming from an active ignorance of most of what’s told to you and/or a severe lack of self-awareness, there may not be much point to that either.

    Immediately after the Big Bang, according to current models, nearly the whole universe was just hydrogen gas. Most other elements were formed in stars as they accumulated, burned and went nova. The Earth is made up of the remnants of exploded stars pre-dating our Sun.

    Chemicals react when they physically touch, that’s how chemistry works. Certain reactions immediately merge the chemicals into new compounds (and more so the longer they’re in contact), and once formed most are difficult to separate again. You can make water from hydrogen and oxygen with just a little flame (or lightning strike) but extracting hydrogen from water is a far more complex process. So the more time went by the more complex the materials were, and again we’re aiming at the one billion year mark on Earth after the raw matter had been around for about 9 billion years previously.

    The matierials were mixed by the wind and the waves because there was wind, there were waves, and there were lots and lots of materials. The amount has been almost constant since the formation of the Earth, the atmosphere and therefore the wind were around after 500 million years, and the water condensed after 700 million years. The material that found its way into membranes could have come from anywhere on Earth and been moved around by any or all of its natural forces.

    The bubble hypothesis is just that, so there’s no research that shows it definitely happened. It doesn’t need to be more than a hypothesis to counter an argument by elimination of possible causes, let alone one in service of an argument from ignorance. But the “blueprint” was the physical imprint of the physical features of the organism, figuratively pressed onto a length of RNA/DNA like the holes in the roll for a player piano. It shaped future generations like a mould, and was itself moulded over time by natural selection. A footprint in a muddy puddle may produce a foot shape made of ice in winter, which can make its own new prints if moved.

    An entirely false quote, look at that. No one has referred to the RNA experiment as the “saviour of atheism”; if you Google the phrase in quotes you get one result and it’s a DeviantArt drawing of something else. Atheism doesn’t collapse if one alternative hypothesis to divine action proves untenable, which is something those who attack evolution never seem to understand. There were atheists before Darwin, because there were atheists before there were Christians, and there’ll still be atheists if Darwin’s theory ever does collapse, but the theory is not collapsing because it works. All these questions you’re asking were around in Darwin’s time too, not one of them is new, and they didn’t stop it then.

  19. I’m not ignoring what you have written, I’m simply trying to get you to realize that the how you are suggesting on how something has been before you or anyone else has experienced it, is not logical. According to current models? That is a guess. It is not science. No one has proven that there were any gasses in the beginning, or any other element. As a matter of fact the current idea is that there was nothing. Gasses and such has been added by the atheists to try to give themselves a launching pad so that they can then say life came from this. But lets say there were gasses, and they exploded. How many time have we seen gasses explode, or anything explode for that matter and a sun was created. Or even a moon. The only thing that gas exploding has made is destruction. Prove that that much gas would have been in one place at all, if there were any. And if gas was to be produced, why would it move anywhere? There was no gravity, since there were no heavenly bodies, nor a place for gas to collect. And if the chemicals or gases needed were here, why didn’t they meet and burn out on a much smaller scale. What produced the gasses? They just don’t appear from nothing. And why would they move from one location to another? Why wouldn’t they just remain where they were? You are using poor logic to obtain your own goals and you’re falling flat on your face. It gasses were here a long time ago they would have burned out as they were produced. Or have dissipated, if there was any thing that would have moved them at all. We know that gasses are produced today by separating it from other elements. You say that hydrogen gasses exploded and made the sun, so you are saying that the sun produced itself. If the suns contains all of the hydrogen in the universe, and then some of them exploded and from those suns exploding made all the planets? What kind of science are you teaching that refuses to check itself, with logical reasoning? All these gasses that could have exploded would have exploded upon their first appearance. And unless those gasses were produced at a large enough quantity, all of a sudden to make an explosion, they wouldn’t have made a fizzle big enough to light the dark.
    This is what is believed about hydrogen on earth. “But here on Earth, hydrogen and helium are only a small part of the world we inhabit. By mass, hydrogen and helium combined make up far less than 1% of the Earth, and even if we restrict ourselves to the Earth’s crust, it’s still just a tiny percentage compared to the other, heavier elements.”
    http://scienceblogs.com/startswithabang/2013/07/05/why-did-the-universe-start-off-with-hydrogen-helium-and-not-much-else/

    So it is commonly accepted that the suns that were and are, were formed by gasses that exploded and what about the planets.
    I have heard that the “big bang” started out as an explosion of some kind. Was this hydrogen and helium exploding? And if it was, why are these gasses still available to be in the suns? Why weren’t they just all used up. And if gasses just appeared to make the suns, then why aren’t these same gasses still appearing and making a mess of the whole solar system? Could it be that science hasn’t thought this through enough? Could it be that the gasses didn’t appear on their own, in an unlimited space. For if indeed gases did appear on their own, (sounds familiar, evolutionist?), from what were they produced? If they did come from nothing, I guess that appearing would have been enough to push them in space, if space was built along the same principles that it is today. But if one gas or all the gasses that appeared, had literally appeared on their own, the space being unlimited would have all these gases being present all at once everywhere in space. If you follow all of you say to the end, you have to ask your self, and then, and then and then. Dawkins’ said the life probably came from another planet. Why are we to believe? But even if it did, the question, is if it came from another planet, how did life start on that other planet? Are we to assume that that life also came from another planet, and then from another? Now you are getting to the point on actually implying that life has always been. As you are implying that gasses have always been. As space has always been. But clearly we know that all of this isn’t the case. It all started. And it started in the mind of an Infinite Being who “spoke and it was, who commanded and it stood fast”
    It’s either that or believe that this, that everything just happened by accident. The gasses, becoming stars, from a build up of gasses that happened when someone left the giant space heater valve open. Poppy cock right? I’m sure. I agree. But no less then your unthought through assumption that either gasses have been around for ever, and some how what had been around for ever suddenly had a mind to explode. Which means that a new element had to have been interjected into the mix. And if that were the case then that new element had to have been an intelligence. Or that the gasses were massed produced somehow, causing a build up of excess gases that either should have burned up as they hit physical space and no boom would have formed. Only a fizzle, then nothing once again. Equilibrium restored. Or an intelligence directed those gasses and He formed them. Making them into the suns for light. And then formed the earth, now that light was made so that plants and animals could be created, and be sustained, all at one time, or at least in the space of time allotted, in the Bible. You see, if you think it through logically, you get God.

  20. A hypothesis is a guess, yes, but a scientific theory is has enough evidence behind it to justify confidence that it’s right, and the Big Bang has been at that point for a long time now.

    Regardless of what you’re prepared to accept you’ve ignored, it’s time for me to start ignoring at least some of what you write. This article is on evolution but you’ve dived backwards through abiogenesis into cosmology to try and find something else unexplained where there aren’t several readily available theories or hypotheses that make it seem less impossible than you need it to be. And now that you’re on cosmology, it’s just the same old “how” challenges that constitute the same fallacious argument but with even less understanding on your end, and a tired old canard about Dawkins to boot.

    Tell me, Gerald, why do you comment here?

    1. You know you never said that you could be wrong about this, (and about all the rest), but about this. I just read through my post and I surprised myself. Am I correct that you are of the opinion that these gasses formed somehow on their own. Which means they were made by some other elements that had to have been around before them. But if there was so much of these gasses, and since space is so vast, how did these gasses, collect to such an amount as to become so volatile. And if these gasses were what initiated the “big bang” and the made the suns and everything inorganic, then how did these gasses form the suns? Where have you ever seen an explosion form anything like a sun. When has any explosion form anything other than carbon monoxide or ash? You probably would be of the opinion that somehow these gasses were drawn together. But that is not the nature of gasses. Gasses expand. Not concentrate. And as I said, don’t forget that space is supposed to be infinite, vast. with no end. And if they did coalesce, why? What made the spark that ignited the gasses and then forced the remnants of theses gasses to form the suns. What power is maintaining these suns. And there should still be more suns being formed. We see them dying out, (supposedly), but we don’t see them forming. Why not. The gasses should still be around. And for that matter why don’t we still see continually burning from all the extra gasses coming into contact with the fire of all the suns. This theory is full of holes and doesn’t seem the least way feasible.

  21. Ok. Let me ask you what is the evidence behind the “big bang”? And I know you are smart enough to realize that if life is not shown to be able to come from nothing, and it isn’t. And that included not living chemicals. And if we have only seen or observed that life has only come from that which was alive, then that means there is no clear logical reason to assume that life came from nothing. Or from non living chemicals. And that automatically tosses out the theory of evolution, because if life doesn’t come from nothing, or from non living chemicals, and that the theory that life has always been is not a viable answer, then that means that God created life. Why do I comment here? Well why do so many believe that evolution is scientific, when no one has provided any kind of actual proof to show that what they say evolution was able to do, actually did it. All you have done is repeat what the evolutionists have said. That evolution is true. But you don’t contest my arguments. You refuse to acknowledge them at all, as if the are of no consequence. But I have pointed out how Evolution could not be possible. And this is backed up by the scientific method. It would be far better and honest to just simply admit that my questions need to be addressed and not try to sweep them under the rug. These questions point out holes in the theory of evolution. And they won’t go away.

    1. Evidence for the Big Bang, observational evidence at that, you could have just Googled, so take that up on a thread that’s actually concerned with it.

      It took me a long time just to parse your first statement on life, and in the end it wasn’t worth the effort. In 1902 flight had not been shown to be able to be achieved with artificial materials, but in 1903 the Wright brothers did it. According to your logic you would have been certain in 1902 that a heavier-than-air powered aircraft was completely impossible, and then you’d have been proven wrong. Just because a method for something has not yet been discovered does not mean there is no method, and just because we’ve never seen something doesn’t mean it can’t happen. This is why an argument from ignorance is weak; the possibility of it being utterly contradicted constantly hangs over it, and that affects it even if it never comes to pass. And you have never been able to demonstrate that your core argument against evolution is not an argument from ignorance, instead ignoring the fact that repeating the same argument ad nauseum does not make it less invalid.

      You don’t comment here because you think there’s no proof of evolution. You’ve stated that, over and over, it’s had no effect on anyone, and you’re still here. What do you think you’ll ultimately achieve?

  22. And you are right an hypothesis, is only a guess. But all of the theory of evolution are made of guesses, that have not in the slightest been show to be good guesses. It ignores the fact that abiogenesis is built upon an already thrown out theory, “spontaneous generation.”. It ignores the fact that the cell that is the foundation of life, has been shown to only come from another cell, which provides all of what the following cells need to function. And geneticists have removed enough of the DNA from cells, and none of those cells have ever spontaneous generated its own DNA, or all of a sudden been reprogrammed on its own. These are all valid arguments and holes in the theory of evolution that should have been considered and shown, I repeat, SHOWN, to have been overcome before the “GUESS” for the hypothesis, of evolution was ever accepted to be a theory. Life comes only from life. And God is the only explanation for life that makes sense.

  23. We’ve been over spontaneous generation. It was the idea that life could spring from anything in moments, like maggots from grain in the sack. This is indeed how many creationists view abiogenesis, like it’s easy, common and requires nothing. Since all life is genetically related, all life is explained by evolution if abiogenesis happened once in all of history, so in terms of probability and circumstances it can well afford to have been almost impossible. To eliminate it as a possibility you must truly eliminate the “almost”, and listing a group of things we have not yet observed cannot achieve this.

    The abiogenesis hypothesis will not become a theory until a fully viable method not only emerges but predicts specific qualities of life itself, because a theory requires evidence such as this. But to discard the hypothesis we must know not only that we’ve never seen it happen, but that it can never happen no matter how much time and material are possible. One must prove the negative, the hard way.

  24. SmartLx. You claim, “We’ve been over spontaneous generation”. But neither you nor Tim have gone over this. You have tapped danced around it just like the other evolutionists have done about it. Not dealing with the holes in their theories and shying away from answering the “how can this be possible when this shows otherwise” questions. And your statement of what “spontaneous generation” is, erroneous or at least shows your ignorance on the subject. Here is the definition from the Merriam Webster website. “Definition of spontaneous generation

    :a now discredited notion that living organisms spontaneously originate directly from nonliving matter — called also abiogenesis
    And this from Britannica.com. Take a look at the site. (https://www.britannica.com/science/spontaneous-generation)

    And another website. https://www.britannica.com/science/spontaneous-generation
    You allude that although the scientists ruled that life could not come from nothing or from non life in moments, that they decided that millions of years could change that impossibility to something entirely possible. This is from you. “the idea that life could spring from anything in moments,”And you say, ” all life is explained by evolution if abiogenesis happened once in all of history, so in terms of probability and circumstances it can well afford to have been almost impossible.” So you seem to think that what is not possible to happen today, could well have been feasible millions of years before. Yet you base this hypothesis upon what, What you would prefer to have happened? You have never, we, us, they, no one has ever seen life come from nothing. You are basing your assumption on pure speculation. It does not even meet the demands of the scientific method. But at least the earlier scientists who annulled the possibility of “spontaneous generation” had made up their minds. They did not say that it could have happened. They did not say “that although it doesn’t seem possible for “spontaneous generation” to be possible today, millions of years of time could change that impossible to being possible”. No they didn’t say this. They determined that “spontaneous generation” was not possible, in as far as what has been observed was telling them. And since that first determination, no has still not observed life coming from non life or from nothing. In fact due to what has been observed for over 6000 years up to our present time, we assume that the way we have seen life to present itself, is more than likely the way life will present itself far into the distant future. And it is because of this reasoning it is more logical to assume that the way life is occurring today, is the only way that life could have occurred back in the distant past. So either life has always been, or it came from Life. The source of life. God. Now deal with my logic. Tell my He isn’t possible, or just tell me that life has always been as it was. Some how we just forgot that we have always been. But the idea that life came from nothing or from non living chemicals, has already been ruled out by previous scientists. And at least were not swayed by popular opinion, or by fame or by riches or tenure. Or because they are afraid to change their minds and accept what the evidence is telling them.

    1. It becomes less and less of a priority to respond to this the further it goes, when it appears to be going nowhere. Everyone but Gerald, give a shoutout if you’re still reading down here. If you’re not, don’t.

      Scientists never ruled that life cannot come from non-life (except for creationists, who assume that from the start). The hypothesis of spontaneous generation held that it was a frequent occurrence; was dismissed when Pasteur determined that it wasn’t happening in any of the commonly held circumstances, such as grain “generating” insects. His “law of biogenesis” was only named that afterwards, because when he said life only comes from non-life he was simply recounting his own observations. In any case, even if he had declared absolutely that there’s no way for life to come from non-life, he would not have had any evidence for this because he could not systematically eliminate all possible circumstances in the present day, let alone 3.5 billion years ago when it actually happened.

      There are several factors that would have made it easier for life to emerge from non-life in the early days of the Earth than today. Two major ones:
      – Life did not already exist. If life is emerging anew anywhere on the planet right now, far more sophisticated life is probably already there to eat it, starve it, suffocate it, crush it and/or poison it.
      – The Earth was still cooling from its molten origins. There was more tectonic activity and therefore more major natural movement of large amounts of land, water and the chemicals in them.

      God is possible, sure, but He has never been definitively observed either as far as we’re concerned. He is only a “more logical” cause of life if you already believe He exists, because if not then He’s the biggest possible assertion you can make in order to justify anything. Abiogenesis, a complex but natural and in a sense mundane chemical event, having happened once in history, only has to seem more likely than the existence of a god to appear “more logical”. So to advocate for the god hypothesis of the origin of life, you have to argue for the (at least likely) existence of the god externally, i.e. without basing it on the emergence of life. You can’t assume your conclusion as part of your premise, you must establish it independently.

      1. “Pasteur determined that it wasn’t happening in any of the commonly held circumstances, such as grain “generating” insects. His “law of biogenesis” was only named that afterwards, because when he said life only comes from non-life he was simply recounting his own observations. In any case, even if he had declared absolutely that there’s no way for life to come from non-life, he would not have had any evidence for this because he could not systematically eliminate all possible circumstances in the present day, let alone 3.5 billion years ago when it actually happened.” And yet what you are saying is a possibility has never been observed at all and what has been observed for all of these years times each organism, over all these years, tells us that what you are saying happened is so improbable that it could never have happened according to the laws of physics. You deny the birth of Christ from what? Because you reject that an egg could have been inseminated, by God. You assume that since life from the womb could only have been made viable if what has been before is how it is is always to be. Yet you don’t think twice when you accept the fact that life comes only from life. Each cell from each organism, has been the only way that we have witnessed that another cell comes into being. And along with that is the DNA, and its programming that will be utilized to direct that cell to perform its duties. Are you really ready to accept that DNA and its programming was “spontaneously generated also? That it just happened? or that somehow that first “what ever” was able to survive over millions of years in some form of stasis, until enough time went by and it became the first empty cell. And then survived until it somehow developed DNA, and survived another millions of years until, a working programming was developed, and then millions of more years to morph into what it needed to be to make that DNA and install that programming. How long can a cell survive outside its environment? How long will it survive without DNA, and programming? You keep ignoring all that screams impossible to bullheadedly try to grasp that impossibility, that is always beyond your grasp.

  25. SmartLx. You wrote this. “The abiogenesis hypothesis will not become a theory until a fully viable method not only emerges but predicts specific qualities of life itself, because a theory requires evidence such as this. But to discard the hypothesis we must know not only that we’ve never seen it happen, but that it can never happen no matter how much time and material are possible. One must prove the negative, the hard way.”

    Please let me draw your attention to this part of what you said. “But to discard the hypothesis we must know not only that we’ve never seen it happen, but that it can never happen no matter how much time and material are possible. One must prove the negative, the hard way”
    Come on SmartLx. You don’t have anything other than it was dreamed up by a scientist. There is no evidence for “spontaneous generation” or abiogenesis. But you say we should keep the door open and hope that one day, that which has been deemed impossible today, happens again sometime in the future. You said, “But to discard the hypothesis we must know not only that we’ve never seen it happen, but that it can never happen no matter how much time and material are possible”. Now I ask you, Where does the possibility of God fit into your equations? How can you claim that God is so impossible all the while maintaining your faith in something that has already been shown to be impossible and that by observation has been shown to be not the way you claim? There have been people, scientists, and there are others, scientists who have through observation and interpreting the evidence who are claiming that from what they have observed that it looks like everything was Intelligently Designed. Now come on take a breath. Slowly exhale and tell the world the truth also. That there could be God who created everything. At the very least admit that God has as much of a chance to have been the cause of life then “abiogenesis”. At least that would be almost true. Because since life does seem to have been designed, then God is the cause. And that there is a devil who wants to kill us all. And that we do need salvation. So that we can accept the opportunity that God is offering. To continue to deny, this is influencing the destinies of those who are wanting to know the truth. Those who hold us in esteem. And we could be leading them to eternal destruction. No this argument, our discussing on this site, have eternal consequences. Stop closing the door. Admit the evidence for Intelligent design in your life room court.

    1. Quote me where I ever said God is impossible, Gerald, or never put words in my mouth again. God is a hypothesis just like abiogenesis, but unlike abiogenesis there are a countless number of kinds of evidence we could find for God and yet have not. The absence of evidence for a God who supposedly created everything and most importantly wants us to believe in Him is extremely conspicuous.

      By contrast, the evidence for the actual abiogenesis event that resulted in all life would be very specific, very localised, and probably just gone after all this time. It’s easy to understand why even if it was a huge event we might never see a trace of it. This is why even if we manage to replicate it perfectly without direct interference it will remain a scientific theory, not a certainty. But because a scientific theory is backed by evidence, that would be more than enough to justify enough confidence in it to simply say it happened. I’m confident saying that right now, just because I don’t believe a God exists, let alone did anything.

      1. Come on! Here take a look at this. And let me remind you. That the environment that was around when what you assumed happened, was supposed to happen, is not as perfect as the environment today. So keep this in mind with the sites that I am providing.https://math.stackexchange.com/questions/29950/does-repeated-activity-increase-the-probability-of-a-specific-event-happening.
        Now we know that what one cell of an organism has done, is to be what to expect from a cell that is produced from the parent cell. We know that this is a pattern. It has happened more than once and has been observed. What you are suggesting is contrary to what we have observed. It has happened so often that we can predict with certainty it will happen the same way far into the future. So using the same reasoning, it is more logical to assume that it would have happened the same way long ago into the past. And it really is illogical, to accept an assumption that has been shown not to have been possible when there is evidence that a different answer is more probable. And that evidence is the fact that all that is appears to have been designed. The other fact is that there is so much complexity in what has been designed that chance could never have performed well enough to achieve the end results. The fact is that we as intelligent beings, leave fingerprints in what we design and manufacture. So much so that what we make from art, bombs, murders, to all invented devices, can be identified as to the originator, of those items, just by the way an item is developed, or made. And God has left His fingerprints all over creation.

  26. SmartLx. You wrote. It took me a long time just to parse your first statement on life, and in the end it wasn’t worth the effort. In 1902 flight had not been shown to be able to be achieved with artificial materials, but in 1903 the Wright brothers did it. According to your logic you would have been certain in 1902 that a heavier-than-air powered aircraft was completely impossible, and then you’d have been proven wrong. Just because a method for something has not yet been discovered does not mean there is no method, and just because we’ve never seen something doesn’t mean it can’t happen. This is why an argument from ignorance is weak; the possibility of it being utterly contradicted constantly hangs over it, and that affects it even if it never comes to pass. And you have never been able to demonstrate that your core argument against evolution is not an argument from ignorance, instead ignoring the fact that repeating the same argument ad nauseum does not make it less invalid.” But here you are talking about something that is mechanical. Something that someone can put their hands on. But what we are discussing, is completely beyond possibility. It has already been deemed as such. Your hypothesis of the theory of evolution and it supporting theories have never been shown to be possible. And the arguments that I have made and are valid, have never before been shown to have no relevance. And the observances that have been made all through time by light of the scientific method should tell everyone that evolution is impossible.

    1. If something is impossible, Gerald, it doesn’t matter whether attempts at it are natural or deliberate. If it is achieved, we know it’s not impossible, and therefore unless it is categorically ruled out we cannot say with certainty that it’s impossible even before that point. Abiogenesis has only been “deemed” impossible by creationists, and “deeming” holds no weight in science. Establishing it as unlikely can never equal impossibility, especially with a large number of unknown factors. Find an argument for the impossibility of abiogenesis that does not rely on the supposedly massive odds against it.

      1. “Abiogenesis has only been “deemed” impossible by creationists,”. I hate to say this, but you are not living up to your name, SmartLx. There are many scientists, yes some of them are proud to call themselves Christians, but there are other scientists who don’t believe in God and they look at what the evolutionists are offering as proof for their god, and they also say, “No, impossible”.
        There have even been other evolutionists who have made the same statements, in one way or another. Some simply go one looking, hoping that what they are searching for is just around the corner, or to be found in the next shovelful of earth. And then there are others who find that they can no longer deny the existence of God. Please stop with your support to evolution. At least tell people that you aren’t sure. Because you don’t have any reason to be sure. You say anything is possible, yet to refuse to accept the possibility of God. Stop speaking with a forked tongue. It all looks as designed because it was. And God did it.

      2. “Abiogenesis has only been “deemed” impossible by creationists, and “deeming” holds no weight in science.” I forgot, that your own “scientists” deemed it impossible. Not just Creationists. Scientists. Those who started out ruling out theories that did not hold up to scrutiny. And yet you say, abiogenesis, could have been possible, in spite of the scientists today who say it wasn’t possible and inspite of those scientists in the beginning who said it wasn’t possible.

  27. SmartLx. This is getting to seem as if you are more beguiled by what has been taught you then I thought. This from you “here are several factors that would have made it easier for life to emerge from non-life in the early days of the Earth than today. Two major ones:
    – Life did not already exist. If life is emerging anew anywhere on the planet right now, far more sophisticated life is probably already there to eat it, starve it, suffocate it, crush it and/or poison it.
    – The Earth was still cooling from its molten origins. There was more tectonic activity and therefore more major natural movement of large amounts of land, water and the chemicals in the”. You don’t even realize that all of what you said is only in your imagination. It is pure speculation. Not one part of it has been substantiated in a laboratory. It has not gone through any kind of duplication process. I don’t understand how you can continue to champion evolution when it has done even less to give you reason to believe in it then a man who is battering his wife all the while he continues to tell her he loves her. There is no proof for either. And this is the same thing for all of the sub theories that are being used to try and shore up the theory of evolution. Your supposition that happened once is pure speculation, because you are taking what is and speculate how it became. But you are making what you think is an educated guess. But in reality you ignore reality to try to give credence to your assumptions. What you are ignoring is the fact that all we have ever observed is that life only comes from life. We have never seen this to be otherwise. This pattern has never been broken. So instead of doing as the earlier scientist did early on when “Spontaneous Generation had its heyday, and then was deemed impossible, you refuse to accept the reality. Life could never have come from nothing or from inorganic matter. You also refuse to accept the fact that all DNA, and its programming from each cell, simple or complex, comes only from the source of where that cell originated. A cell would never have time to wait millions of years for the development of DNA, and then another million years to develop the idea of DNA, and then develop the ability to make the DNA, and then to formulate the idea of what use to program and then to develop what would be needed to program, all of the amino acids, and the like. Then to get the sequencing. No, No, No, a thousand times no. Don’t you, won’t you understand that what you are saying was possible by accident, could never, ever have happened without some kind of Intelligence to devise and implement it all. You are looking at something that you think is so simple without realizing how complicated it is. You my friend are out of your depth. And drowning without realizing it.

  28. SmartLx, You claim, “Abiogenesis, a complex but natural”, you just dug the grave for your precious theory of abiogenesis and nailed the coffin shut to your god evolution.
    What is natural, that never continue to be repeated over and over again? Wouldn’t this be the very definition of natural? Babies being born, that is natural. Rain from the sky, that’s natural. An apple dropping from the tree, that is natural. Cellular division, that is natural. Abiogenesis, Errrrrrrrr, it ain’t happening. Never had. Never could. Never would. Because it ignores what really is natural.
    Come on SmartLx, admit it. You and all the other evolutionists are wrong. I can’t help but feel that you are not really that dense, that you would continue to press on with such an obviously erroneous assumption. You must admit that what I’m pointing out makes sense. It must be getting so hard to hold back yourself from yelling, “Oh my, what a fool I’ve been”. Well let’s let the past be the past. It’s not what you did that matters, it is more important for what you are going to do. So don’t waste anymore time. Denounce evolution, and proclaim your error. Then seek God. He is there with you. It is not too late. You can be saved, along with others in your sphere of influence. Don’t drown and take them with you. There blood will be on your hands.

    1. Gerald writes: [What is natural, that never continue to be repeated over and over again?]

      You can say with 100% certainty that life didn’t spontaneously start multiple times on this planet? Fascinating. Did it ever start on another planet? I bet you think you know the answer to that question too.

      If life arose again after the first time, it had a major obstacle in its way – the existence of life already. Those new life forms were just bits of tasty organic matter (think food) for the multitudes already around it.

      [Abiogenesis, Errrrrrrrr, it ain’t happening. Never had. Never could. Never would. Because it ignores what really is natural.]

      All living things are made up entirely of atoms and molecules that exist in the universe. All living things exist without violating the laws of chemistry, physics, etc. All living things exist entirely under the laws of nature without exception. Abiogenesis is the process of natural components coming together and forming a living thing. There is nothing about the universe that prohibits this from occurring. Your ridiculous claim ignores reality. Living things are made up entirely out of natural components, so stating it “ignores what really is natural” is the only error to be found on this topic…

      [Come on SmartLx, admit it. You and all the other evolutionists are wrong. I can’t help but feel that you are not really that dense, that you would continue to press on with such an obviously erroneous assumption. You must admit that what I’m pointing out makes sense.]

      Gerald, if I may be frank with you, there is very little of what you say that ever makes sense. Not just in this thread, but within this entire website. You can’t explain where the facts of evolution come from better than the theory of evolution, you have no grasp of the laws of the universe and why they matter, and you continue to repeat claim after claim that has already been shown to be nonsense in previous threads.

      [It’s not what you did that matters, it is more important for what you are going to do. So don’t waste anymore time. Denounce evolution, and proclaim your error. Then seek God. He is there with you. It is not too late. You can be saved, along with others in your sphere of influence. Don’t drown and take them with you. There blood will be on your hands.]

      I’ve often wondered if you will get a chance to realize how much of your limited life span you’ve wasted believing in foolhardy conjecture just before you cease to exist for all time. I’ll never know I suppose, but I can’t help but hope that you will…

  29. You can’t find proof that life started on its own on this planet. And you have even less proof that it could have started on another planet. Why would you even allow yourself to make such a statement. That doesn’t seem to be thinking scientifically. Abiogenesis. is just another way to say “spontaneous generation”. And the theory was thrown out by all scientists a long time ago. Do you know why it was thrown out? Because it was proved impossible through the use of the Scientific Method. They put it to the test, and found that in no way was it possible to be able to come from inorganic matter or from nothing. What was the ultimate reason that they deemed “abiogenesis, or spontaneous generation” impossible? Because they found that when all was said and done, it never happened. And they could have had the “luxury” of using the excuse that “it only needed to happen once”, but they didn’t. They decided that if it could not be demonstrated or repeated in a laboratory, if it could not be observed to have happened or observe it happening, then, “it never happened and it could not happen”.

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