Claim:The number of times that IC has been shown not to be (irreducibly complex) should make you realize that there most likely are natural explanations ahead.
Reply: Irreducible Complexity: The existence of irreducible interdependent structures in biology is an undeniable fact
https://reasonandscience.catsboard.com/t1468-irreducible-complexity-the-existence-of-irreducible-interdependent-structures-in-biology-is-an-undeniable-fact#2133
Natural selection would not select for components of a complex system that would be useful only in the completion of that much larger system.
In other words: Why would natural selection select an intermediate biosynthesis product, which has by its own no use for the organism, unless that product keeps going through all necessary steps, up to the point to be ready to be assembled in a larger system? Never do we see blind, unguided processes leading to complex functional systems with integrated parts contributing to the overarching design goal.
A minimal amount of instructional complex information is required for a gene to produce useful proteins. A minimal size of a protein is necessary for it to be functional. Thus, before a region of DNA contains the requisite information to make useful proteins, natural selection would not select for a positive trait and play no role in guiding its evolution.
1. A codified information transmission system depends on: a) A code as a system of rules where a symbol, letters, words, or even sounds, gestures, or images, are assigned to something else. Assigning meaning of characters through a code system requires a common agreement of meaning. Statistics, Semantics, Synthax, and Pragmatics, b) Information encoded through that code, c) An information storage system, and d) an information transmission system, that is encoding, transmitting, and decoding.
2. We see that precisely in living cells, where information is encoded through the histone code which is a set of rules, stored in amino acid sequences in the histone tail. They are used to orchestrate gene expression. The assignment of codified meaning to combinatorial amino acid sequences must be pre-established by a mind. And so, the information which is sent through the system, as well as the communication channels that permit encoding, sending, and decoding, which in gene expression is done through the orchestration of histone code readers, writers, erasers, and permit the loosening and tightening chromatin, and in consequence, the RNA polymerase machinery to express specific genes. This system had to be set-up all at once. That is the software - the histone code "language", as well as the hardware, that is the histone tails upon which the "message" is written, the readers, writers, and erasers.
3. The origin of such complex communication systems is best explained by an intelligent designer. Since no humans were involved in creating these complex computing systems, a suprahuman super-intelligent agency must have been the creator.
The oxygen-evolving complex (OEC) of photosystem II is irreducible complex.
1. One of the most important and fundamental biochemical reactions on which all advanced life-forms depend is performed by the oxygen-evolving complex (OEC) in oxygenic photosynthesis, responsible for catalyzing the light-driven oxidation of water to molecular oxygen in plants, algae, and cyanobacteria. It is also described as "undoubtedly one of the most remarkable inventions in all of biology." OEC is surrounded by 4 core proteins of photosystem II at the membrane-lumen interface. It remains a fundamental mystery of how this complicated, four-electron transfer process originated. Enigmatic is how the precise geometry and unique mechanism of the OEC came about. Key differences exist between oxygenic and anoxygenic photosynthetic machinery with no apparent homologs or transitional forms that would provide clues to their development. Foremost among these differences is the presence and key role of manganese at the site of water oxidation in photosystem II. This is distinct from bacterial anoxygenic reaction centers, which rely on redox-active periplasmic proteins as electron donors.
2. According to peer-reviewed scientific papers, each of the four extrinsic proteins, (PsbO, PsbP, PsbQ, and PsbR) of plants are ESSENTIAL, and each was tested upon mutated form, and the mechanism was found inefficient and compromising the OEC function. Furthermore, a water network around the Mn4CaO5 cluster and D1 protein subunit of PSII is also indispensable, and
3. That means evolutionary intermediates are non-functional. There is a precise fit and size matching of the residues with the individual atoms of the clusters. This is evidence, that this most fundamental biochemical reaction could not have emerged by evolutionary, step-wise mechanisms, and therefore, Darwin's theory has been falsified and refuted. The only plausible alternative to darwinian evolution is intelligent design.
The cell is irreducibly complex
https://reasonandscience.catsboard.com/t1299-abiogenesis-the-cell-is-irreducibly-complex
Abiogenesis? Impossible !!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ycJblRcgqXk
The cell is the irreducible, minimal unit of life 5
https://sci-hub.tw/https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-319-56372-5_8
Chemistry and the Missing Era of Evolution: A. Graham Cairns-Smith
We can see that at the time of the common ancestor, this system must already have been fixed in its essentials, probably through a critical interdependence of subsystems. (Roughly speaking in a domain in which everything has come to depend on everything else nothing can be easily changed, and our central biochemistry is very much like that.
https://sci-hub.tw/https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18260066
chemist Wilhelm Huck, professor at Radboud University Nijmegen
A working cell is more than the sum of its parts. "A functioning cell must be entirely correct at once, in all its complexity
https://sixdaysblog.com/2013/07/06/protocells-may-have-formed-in-a-salty-soup/
I like you.
Reply: Thanks :=))
Claim: I do have a soft spot for you, Rationalist. You have often been very patient with people (and others have been less patient with you). I commend you for this tolerance. You are a lone, tireless advocate of your faith and ID and with those as pre-conception/starting points, (not science or the truth), you stick well to it, but leave yourself open to criticism based on your pre-conception/motive and unnecessary god inclusions/conclusions.
Reply: My scientific approach is attempting to remove my bias as much as possible, and start with the evidence, and attempting to come to rational, case-adequate conclusions based on the evidence.
Claim: There were/are/will always be new things to fathom.
ID and IC (i.e. teleological) arguments can sound amazing and very compelling to non-specialists and especially when embellished with adjectives, comparisons to things that do not involve billions of years, miss much out, exaggerate and using unknown or unverifiable stats to bolster it with. But without positive evidence or facts or science, what else is there to convince with? Rainbows, snow drops, the movements of the stars and planets and so much more was once PROOF of God to most people. Because we had no current explanation.
Reply: I think theistic claims are not based on gaps ( sometimes we commit that error imho, admitted), but there are many positive claims and evidence can be provided, to bolster the claim of ID: God is a logical inference based on the evidence observed in the natural world. If a theist would say, ''We don't know what caused 'x', therefore, God.'', it would be indeed a 'God of the gaps' fallacy. What we say, IMHO is: ''Based on current knowledge, an intelligent creative agency is a better explanation than materialistic naturalism." If one is not arguing from ignorance, but rather reasoning from the available evidence to the best explanation, is it not rather ludicrous to accuse them of launching a 'god of the gaps argument'? Randomness is a hugely overplayed idea in modern science, a desperate attempt to fill a shrinking corner for materialist reductionism, just as the ‘God of the Gaps' is derided by said materialists as the alleged last resort of Intelligent Design proponents.
God of the gaps and incredulity, a justified refutation of ID arguments?
https://reasonandscience.catsboard.com/t1983-gaps-god-of-the-gaps-and-incredulitya-justified-refutation-of-id-arguments
Claim: A NEW magic trick/ID/IC finding, it must be real.
You have stated in your posts that the things you propose, ‘cannot’ have natural explanations. Quite a claim (without an, ‘if’). That is good, because it shows your confidence (if not evidence). And this is open to science to fill such gaps and show that you may be wrong. But (like my magician watcher), you have merely ignored new explanations and moved onto something else, and will continue to do so. Only when everything is totally and fully explained, (which is obviously never) can you be satisfied. This is totally, ‘god of the gaps’ and your infinite jump to, and regular inclusion of, God in your arguments/conclusion (your pre-conception) and failure to properly engage with specialist responses does not help your case as someone who is open mindedly sharing knowledge and research or wanting any answer that does not correspond to your beliefs. Your actions and declarations are typically conspiracy based and tick all of the boxes.
Reply: My claims are based on what we DO know, not the opposit. As an example:
Chance of intelligence to set up life:
100% We KNOW by repeated experience that intelligence produces all the things, as follows:
factory portals ( membrane proteins ) factory compartments ( organelles ) a library index ( chromosomes, and the gene regulatory network ) molecular computers, hardware ( DNA ) software, a language using signs and codes like the alphabet, an instructional blueprint, ( the genetic and over a dozen epigenetic codes ) information retrieval ( RNA polymerase ) transmission ( messenger RNA ) translation ( Ribosome ) signaling ( hormones ) complex machines ( proteins ) taxis ( dynein, kinesin, transport vesicles ) molecular highways ( tubulins ) tagging programs ( each protein has a tag, which is an amino acid sequence informing other molecular transport machines were to transport them.) factory assembly lines ( fatty acid synthase ) error check and repair systems ( exonucleolytic proofreading ) recycling methods ( endocytic recycling ) waste grinders and management ( Proteasome Garbage Grinders ) power generating plants ( mitochondria ) power turbines ( ATP synthase ) electric circuits ( the metabolic network ) computers ( neurons ) computer networks ( brain ) all with specific purposes.
Chance of unguided random natural events producing just a minimal functional proteome, not considering all other essential things to get a first living self-replicating cell,is:
Let's suppose, we have a fully operational raw material, and the genetic language upon which to store genetic information. Only now, we can ask: Where did the information come from to make the first living organism? Various attempts have been made to lower the minimal information content to produce a fully working operational cell. Often, Mycoplasma is mentioned as a reference to the threshold of the living from the non-living. Mycoplasma genitalium is held as the smallest possible living self-replicating cell. It is, however, a pathogen, an endosymbiont that only lives and survives within the body or cells of another organism ( humans ). As such, it IMPORTS many nutrients from the host organism. The host provides most of the nutrients such bacteria require, hence the bacteria do not need the genes for producing such compounds themselves. As such, it does not require the same complexity of biosynthesis pathways to manufacturing all nutrients as a free-living bacterium.
The simplest free-living bacteria is Pelagibacter ubique. 13 It is known to be one of the smallest and simplest, self-replicating, and free-living cells. It has complete biosynthetic pathways for all 20 amino acids. These organisms get by with about 1,300 genes and 1,308,759 base pairs and code for 1,354 proteins. 14 That would be the size of a book with 400 pages, each page with 3000 characters. They survive without any dependence on other life forms. Incidentally, these are also the most “successful” organisms on Earth. They make up about 25% of all microbial cells. If a chain could link up, what is the probability that the code letters might by chance be in some order which would be a usable gene, usable somewhere—anywhere—in some potentially living thing? If we take a model size of 1,200,000 base pairs, the chance to get the sequence randomly would be 4^1,200,000 or 10^722,000. This probability is hard to imagine but an illustration may help.
Claim: Crying wolf on each new apparent gap.
If all of the scientists could not fathom out a particular mechanism for something, it still means very little and does not imply anything, not least your god and there are multiple explanations, with natural ones most likely.
Reply: Eliminative inductions argue for the truth of a proposition by arguing that competitors to that proposition are false. ( Contrast this with Popperian falsification, where propositions are corroborated to the degree that they successfully withstand attempts to falsify them ) When the available option forms a dichotomy, just to option, A, or not A, they form a mutually exclusive and exhaustive class, eliminating all the competitors entails that the proposition is true. As Sherlock Holmes's famous dictum says: when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth. In this case, eliminative inductions, in fact, become deductions.
Genesis, vs secular science explanations of origins
https://reasonandscience.catsboard.com/t1642-creation-believe-it-or-not-part-1
We have observed atoms having forced that keep them together. We have not explained what that force is, and why it persists. It is assumed to persist for various reasons, but no cause has ever been found, scientifically. The very mechanisms of life: DNA, replication of DNA and other microbiological processes have been observed, but never explained, because their very activity is driven by data processes, which have no known independent cause or source. The force of gravity has been observed, characterized, and tested, but its source of energy has never been explained through naturalistic processes or observation. Logic and mathematics themselves have been analyzed and understood, but what is never explained through naturalistic or materialistic methods or science is why they exist, or what enforces them. They “just are”, and that assumption is the biggest gap materialists make as they seek to explain everything without God. The very foundations of reasoning are the concepts that things are repeatable, and therefore testable and predictable, yet there is no explanation for why things are consistent, from a materialistic perspective. Believers in the one true God, on the other hand, have answers for all of those questions, and it is because we have answers to those questions that we can advance scientific understanding and practical application to our universe and to daily life. There is nothing in the theistic worldview that negates or limits scientific discovery, because we expect a consistent level of logic, predictability, order, material processes and that God wants us to intelligently utilize our world, the senses, and brains we are endowed with. We discover laws of physics, math, and science, and understand they exist and persist because there is a lawgiver. They are there for our benefit, and we are free to discover them and utilize them. To suggest otherwise is merely a statement from ignorance. Ignorance of the existence of God.
Claim: Science lives for and thrives and depends upon gaps to fill and some take a long time, but God was no more present in the explanation when the problem arose than when the natural explanation was found and is no more so now. Some gaps of knowledge in the past existed for centuries, but it was not proof of a god and those who thought it was, have since been shown that they were wrong as the gaps were (as always, naturally) filled. To continue to find gaps, claim god and then continually have them filled, naturally, and ignore them is crying wolf and people will see your game (if they haven’t already) and see right through it. Lack of knowledge in an area is not proof of God or anything and we have so often found this to be the case, with a natural explanation.
Reply: Question: what is the better explanation for the origin of the following things?
https://reasonandscience.catsboard.com/t2245p25-abiogenesis-the-factory-maker-argument#7904
- factory portals with fully automated security checkpoints and control
- factory compartments
- a library index and fully automated information classification, storage, and retrieval program
- computer hardware
- software, a language using signs and codes like the alphabet, an instructional blueprint,
- information retrieval systems
- information transmission systems
- translation systems
- complex robotlike machines
- taxis adapted for cargo transport and delivery, with GPS systems
- highways
- tagging programs informing taxis were to transport goods
- factory assembly lines
- error check and repair systems
- recycling machines
- waste grinders and management
- power generating plants
- power turbines
- electric circuits
Chance, or intelligent design ?
The cell is a factory - adios materialism.
1. Computer hard-drives with high capacity of digital data storage, software programs based on languages using statistics, syntax, semantics, pragmatics, and apobetics, and the elaboration of complex instructional blueprints through those software programs, and data transmission systems (encoding, sending, decoding), all operated through computers and interlinked computer networks, which prescribe, drive, direct, operate and control interlinked compartmentalized factory parks making products for specific purposes, full of autonomous, robotlike high-tech production lines, high-efficiency power plants, complex high-tech robots with autoregulation and feedback loops, producing products with minimal error rates, that are transported through GPS driven transport carriers to their destination, all driven through energy made by high rotative turbines and power plants, are always set up by intelligent agents designing those things for purposeful goals.
2. Science has unraveled, that cells, strikingly, contain, and operate through all those things. Cells are cybernetic, ingeniously crafted cities full of factories. Cells contain information, which is stored in genes (books), and libraries (chromosomes). Cells have superb, fully automated information classification, storage, and retrieval programs ( gene regulatory networks ) which orchestrate strikingly precise and regulated gene expression. Cells also contain hardware - a masterful information-storage molecule ( DNA ) - and software, more efficient than millions of alternatives ( the genetic code ) - ingenious information encoding, transmission, and decoding machinery ( RNA polymerase, mRNA, the Ribosome ) - and highly robust signaling networks ( hormones and signaling pathways ) - awe-inspiring error check and repair systems of data ( for example mind-boggling Endonuclease III which error checks and repairs DNA through electric scanning ). Information systems, which prescribe, drive, direct, operate, and control interlinked compartmentalized self-replicating cell factory parks that perpetuate and thrive life. Large high-tech multimolecular robotlike machines ( proteins ) and factory assembly lines of striking complexity ( fatty acid synthase, non-ribosomal peptide synthase ) are interconnected into functional large metabolic networks. In order to be employed at the right place, once synthesized, each protein is tagged with an amino acid sequence, and clever molecular taxis ( motor proteins dynein, kinesin, transport vesicles ) load and transport them to the right destination on awe-inspiring molecular highways ( tubulins, actin filaments ). All this, of course, requires energy. Responsible for energy generation are high-efficiency power turbines ( ATP synthase )- superb power generating plants ( mitochondria ) and electric circuits ( highly intricate metabolic networks ). When something goes havoc, fantastic repair mechanisms are ready in place. There are protein folding error check and repair machines ( chaperones), and if molecules become non-functional, advanced recycling methods take care ( endocytic recycling ) - waste grinders and management ( Proteasome Garbage Grinders )
3. Chemist Wilhelm Huck, professor at Radboud University, Netherlands: A working cell is more than the sum of its parts. "A functioning cell must be entirely correct at once, in all its complexity. Cells, containing all those things are irreducibly complex. Without energy, information, or the basic building blocks fully synthesized, there would be no life. All this is best explained as a product of a super-intellect, an agency equipped with unfathomable intelligence - through the direct intervention, creative force, and activity of an intelligent cognitive agency, a powerful creator.
Claim: Parasites and who exposes who?
Your case study, like many, are good examples of complex structures. Question (to demonstrate open mindedness and searching for truth): How many times have gaps in scientific knowledge regarding evolution been discovered by a Creationist? So, regarding many of Michael Behe’s IC examples which have many hundreds of explanatory papers; there is nothing stopping a scientist who is a creationist from doing some research and discovering a natural explanation to something. Many believing Christians who are scientists contribute a lot to such findings. In fact, as far as I know, for every error that a scientist has inadvertently made, (or non-scientist that has been fraudulent for financial or notoriety gain) it has been someone who accepts evolution (and not creation) that has uncovered or exposed it. What does that say? That creationists aren’t following science very much and they are just parasitic, trolling through other people’s hard work for petty gain.
Reply: If you think only creationists reject evolution, you might know better after this:
Why Darwins theory of evolution does not explain biodiversity
https://reasonandscience.catsboard.com/t2623-why-darwins-theory-of-evolution-does-not-explain-biodiversity
Where Do Complex Organisms Come From?
https://reasonandscience.catsboard.com/t2316-evolution-where-do-complex-organisms-come-from
Claim: Here’s something I don’t know (Creationist). Let’s find out how (scientist).
Reply: Norman Geisler:
The creation-evolution debate is not religion versus science or the Bible versus science, it's about good science versus bad science. Likewise, it's not faith versus reason, its about reasonable faith, versus unreasonable faith.
Any worldview is limited in that it does not grant absolute truth, but only yields degrees of probability or likelihood. Bayesian inference is a method of statistical inference in which Bayes' theorem is used to update the probability of a hypothesis as more evidence or information becomes available. Bayesian inference has found application in a wide range of activities, including science, theology, and philosophy. After careful examination, all we can do is come to instant-deduction to the best explanation.
Claim: Try to find some positive evidence for a/your God and make predictions and test it and then you have some science that people can work with. I can share examples with you that would work if it helps, because there are multiple ways to tangibly test a god/supernatural/unexplained force.
Reply: How to recognize the signature of (past) intelligent actions
https://reasonandscience.catsboard.com/t2805-how-to-recognize-the-signature-of-past-intelligent-action
Either reality, our physical existence emerged by a lucky accident, spontaneous events of self-organization by unguided natural events in an orderly manner without external direction, purely natural processes and reactions, or through the direct intervention and creative force of an intelligent agency, a powerful creator.
Can:
randomness
unpredictable events
lack of orderly patterns
unfollow or intelligible patterns or combinations
improbable events
unpredictable movements
unplanned events
accidents
Spontaneous generations
control-less events
chaos
unguided
directionless
do the following ?
1. Produce objects in nature very similar to human-made things?
2. Make something based on mathematical principles?
3. Generate systems and networks functioning based on logic gates?
4. Create something purposefully made for specific goals?
5. Come up with specified complexity, the instructional blueprint, or a codified message?
6. and upon this, create irreducible complex and interdependent systems or artifacts composed of several interlocked, well-matched parts contributing to a higher end of a complex system that would be useful only in the completion of that much larger system?
7. Create order or orderly patterns
8. Invent hierarchically arranged systems of parts
9. Create artifacts that use might be employed in different systems ?(as the wheel, used in cars and airplanes )
10. Fine-tune systems and things?
That is all that we observe in the natural world, and it seems to me, intelligence explains following much better than no intelligence:
1. Machines, production lines, factories, and factory parks
2. Physical laws
3. The gene regulatory network
4. The eye to see, the ear to listen, the nose to smell, the brain to think
5. The genetic and epigenetic information
6. The flagellum, the Cell, the eye, etc.
7. Fibonacci curves are seen in Seashells, plants, cactus, etc.
8. Atoms - molecules - molecular machines - cells - multicellular organisms,
9. Sonar systems used in bats, dolphins, whales
10. The BigBang, cosmological constants, the fundamental forces of the universe, our galaxy, the earth ?
I have not enough faith to be an atheist.
Engagement warning.
I suggest that anyone who engages with Otangelo Grasso considers what they are getting into in terms of time, effort, motive and response and consider what you hope to gain from it and strap themselves in. You have been notified and may appear on his site! Here is some correspondence between Otangelo and bio-chemist professor Larry Moran. And Otangelo has been a regular Youtube discussion person on several shows:
https://sandwalk.blogspot.com/2017/02/trying-to-educate-creationist-otangelo.html
Claim: Who are YOU?
There are those who sit back and wonder at the mystery of things. Many of us. There are those who simply and lazily or like sheep or parasites, just attribute things to the unknown and many like to give this unknown a name, having done little if anything themselves. There are others who also try or want to find out in as much detail as they can about how things work. They have, over the centuries, unfolded the mystery of so much, which has often allowed us to make progress and make the understanding of science so much more exciting.
Reply: The science fathers were Christians.
https://reasonandscience.catsboard.com/t1452-what-good-has-the-christian-faith-brought-to-us
Who do you think coined the term scientist? It was William Whewell, an Anglican priest, and theologian, who also came up with the words physicist, cathode, anode, and many other commonly used scientific terms. Essentially, the very language used by scientists today was invented by a believer.
When Charles Darwin wrote The Origin of Species in 1859—the work that first proposed the theory of evolution—he was definitely a believer in God. It’s true that as he grew older, he began to doubt the existence of a personal Creator who cared about his creatures, but Darwin always struggled with his lack of faith. He was at times a Christian and at times an agnostic. But he never thought that his scientific theory was incompatible with the idea of God. Rather, he thought that while God did not have a direct hand in creating the different species of the world, he did indeed create the natural laws that governed the cosmos—including the laws of evolutionary development.
And what of the science of genetics—the means through which evolution supposedly takes place? According to proponents of evolutionary theory, it is only through genetic mutation and the process of natural selection that life on this planet is able to undergo gradual development. Who, then, was the father of this field of study? The answer is Gregor Mendel—an Augustinian friar and abbot of a Catholic monastery! This monk, botanist, and professor of philosophy was the man whose famous experiments on peas led to the formulation of the rules of heredity and to the proposal of the existence of invisible “genes”—which provide a basis for the science of modern genetics.
Well, then what about the big bang theory—the leading explanation of how our universe began? In fact, the man who proposed both the theory of the expansion of the universe as
well as the big bang theory of the origin of the universe—effectively changing the whole course of modern cosmology—was Father Georges Lemaître, a Belgian astronomer and Roman Catholic priest! A priest came up with the big bang theory! This cleric, who taught physics at the Catholic University of Leuven, delivered a famous lecture on his theories in 1933 that was attended by Albert Einstein in California. When Einstein heard Father Lemaître delineate his theory, he said: “This is the most beautiful and satisfactory explanation of creation to which I have ever listened. Now how could this be?
How could the father of genetics be a monk and the father of the big bang theory be a priest? Didn’t these men know what all modern atheists seem to take for granted—that the very theories they espoused contradict the idea of God and nullify the possibility of his existence? Didn’t they know that their belief in God was therefore absurd? Were they really that blind?
Or is there, perhaps, another explanation? Could it be that these great men of science were not blind at all, but rather that modern atheists fail to understand the most simple principle of rational thought— namely, that explaining the scientific process of how the universe came to be does not in any way explain why it came to be. It does not explain the fundamental mystery of existence itself. This mystery can never be explained by science.
None of these giants in the field of science was an atheist. All believed in a Supreme Being who created and designed the universe
Claim: A starter for you on this post topic, but you need to target specialists.
It would be great if you engaged with this process, with an open agenda, acknowledging and correcting and updating and accepting new knowledge to those people and on your site. Here’s one of those (this is a sneak, pre-publication preview) on the post topic and please do read the many other past, present and future articles addressing this (that don’t support your gaps of natural impossibility) and include them on your site and remove any of your arguments that they cover/explain:
https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.09.01.277582v1.full.pdf
I am not engaging otherwise in your article as it presents no evidence to consider (just alleged gaps) and I know so little about it, but I can assist in helping get you in contact with the authors or any of the authors in their research if it helps. They are your target audience on more complex areas, not lay folk. After you have engaged with specialists and demonstrated that you understand, have read the literature on it and have baffled them with your brilliance and they sing your praises, bring/share it here. People like evidence and compelling research. Not someone who just points and says, ‘well how do you explain that then?’.
Reply: Sure. Put them in touch with me.
A lack of responses definitely does not equate to, ‘people have no responses’, but a wrong site to share it.
Claim: If people do not respond to your posts, it may well be that there are no specialists who are here/able to respond or that people think you have nothing or little to present. No response on multiple sites does not mean people have no reply, but that it is not the place to post it. I do emphasise that there are multiple research papers, mostly peer reviewed, that do directly address the things you raise, and I’d be very keen to see you reflect, fairly, those responses after you read them.
Reply: I have done so with Dimiter Kunnev, and he has not engaged, and not replied to my inquiries. He just has accused me of doing cherry picking. See here:
A reply to Dimiter Kunnev
https://reasonandscience.catsboard.com/t1661p25-translation-through-ribosomes-amazing-nano-machines#8008
Claim: You use statistics which are totally unknowns.
Reply: No. They are known.
https://reasonandscience.catsboard.com/t2508-abiogenesis-uncertainty-quantification-of-a-primordial-ancestor-with-a-minimal-proteome-emerging-through-unguided-natural-random-events#5399
Bit by Bit: The Darwinian Basis of Life
Gerald F. Joyce Published: May 8, 2012
https://journals.plos.org/plosbiology/article?id=10.1371/journal.pbio.1001323
Even the sequence of a simple ribozyme of 40 mer has 10^24 possible compositions. To represent all of these compositions at least once, and thus to establish a certainty that this simple ribozyme could have materialized, requires 27 kg of RNA chains, which classifies spontaneous emergence as a highly implausible event.
For an enzyme to be functional, it must fold in a precise three-dimensional pattern. A small chain of 150 amino acids making up an enzyme must be tested within the cell for 10^12 different possible configurations per second, taking 10^26 ( 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000) years to find the right one. This example comprises a very, very, very small degree of the chemical complexity of a human cell.
Claim:So often, the erroneous stats did not even apply if the scenario that is presented were true, which they are so often not. It is emotionalising the case to try to convince people of something which is not there by scientific presentation. I don’t even know how you could present a paper on a lack of knowledge, rather than additional knowledge, which is what you are trying to do. ‘Here is a possible explanation’ rather than your, ‘I can’t explain this’ is the way to go. If you can’t present a positive knowledge case to peer review, why should people take you seriously or not equally consider any other conspiracy or proposal lacking evidence?
Reply: Such a paper has just been published in the journal of theoretical Biology. It has gone through regular peer review, and posits explicitly intelligent design.
Using statistical methods to model the fine-tuning of molecular machines and systems
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0022519320302071?via%3Dihub
Claim: I’m being picked on because…I am hard pressed to think of any Creationist who truly or independently came to the creation conclusion based on a sound scientific education and understanding and with no theological influential play involved and who understands evolution even at a fairly low level.
Reply: See here:
Where Do Complex Organisms Come From?
https://reasonandscience.catsboard.com/t2316-evolution-where-do-complex-organisms-come-from
How does biological multicellular complexity and a spatially organized body plan emerge?
https://reasonandscience.catsboard.com/t2990-how-does-biological-multicellular-complexity-and-a-spatially-organized-body-plan-emerge
Reply: Irreducible Complexity: The existence of irreducible interdependent structures in biology is an undeniable fact
https://reasonandscience.catsboard.com/t1468-irreducible-complexity-the-existence-of-irreducible-interdependent-structures-in-biology-is-an-undeniable-fact#2133
Natural selection would not select for components of a complex system that would be useful only in the completion of that much larger system.
In other words: Why would natural selection select an intermediate biosynthesis product, which has by its own no use for the organism, unless that product keeps going through all necessary steps, up to the point to be ready to be assembled in a larger system? Never do we see blind, unguided processes leading to complex functional systems with integrated parts contributing to the overarching design goal.
A minimal amount of instructional complex information is required for a gene to produce useful proteins. A minimal size of a protein is necessary for it to be functional. Thus, before a region of DNA contains the requisite information to make useful proteins, natural selection would not select for a positive trait and play no role in guiding its evolution.
1. A codified information transmission system depends on: a) A code as a system of rules where a symbol, letters, words, or even sounds, gestures, or images, are assigned to something else. Assigning meaning of characters through a code system requires a common agreement of meaning. Statistics, Semantics, Synthax, and Pragmatics, b) Information encoded through that code, c) An information storage system, and d) an information transmission system, that is encoding, transmitting, and decoding.
2. We see that precisely in living cells, where information is encoded through the histone code which is a set of rules, stored in amino acid sequences in the histone tail. They are used to orchestrate gene expression. The assignment of codified meaning to combinatorial amino acid sequences must be pre-established by a mind. And so, the information which is sent through the system, as well as the communication channels that permit encoding, sending, and decoding, which in gene expression is done through the orchestration of histone code readers, writers, erasers, and permit the loosening and tightening chromatin, and in consequence, the RNA polymerase machinery to express specific genes. This system had to be set-up all at once. That is the software - the histone code "language", as well as the hardware, that is the histone tails upon which the "message" is written, the readers, writers, and erasers.
3. The origin of such complex communication systems is best explained by an intelligent designer. Since no humans were involved in creating these complex computing systems, a suprahuman super-intelligent agency must have been the creator.
The oxygen-evolving complex (OEC) of photosystem II is irreducible complex.
1. One of the most important and fundamental biochemical reactions on which all advanced life-forms depend is performed by the oxygen-evolving complex (OEC) in oxygenic photosynthesis, responsible for catalyzing the light-driven oxidation of water to molecular oxygen in plants, algae, and cyanobacteria. It is also described as "undoubtedly one of the most remarkable inventions in all of biology." OEC is surrounded by 4 core proteins of photosystem II at the membrane-lumen interface. It remains a fundamental mystery of how this complicated, four-electron transfer process originated. Enigmatic is how the precise geometry and unique mechanism of the OEC came about. Key differences exist between oxygenic and anoxygenic photosynthetic machinery with no apparent homologs or transitional forms that would provide clues to their development. Foremost among these differences is the presence and key role of manganese at the site of water oxidation in photosystem II. This is distinct from bacterial anoxygenic reaction centers, which rely on redox-active periplasmic proteins as electron donors.
2. According to peer-reviewed scientific papers, each of the four extrinsic proteins, (PsbO, PsbP, PsbQ, and PsbR) of plants are ESSENTIAL, and each was tested upon mutated form, and the mechanism was found inefficient and compromising the OEC function. Furthermore, a water network around the Mn4CaO5 cluster and D1 protein subunit of PSII is also indispensable, and
3. That means evolutionary intermediates are non-functional. There is a precise fit and size matching of the residues with the individual atoms of the clusters. This is evidence, that this most fundamental biochemical reaction could not have emerged by evolutionary, step-wise mechanisms, and therefore, Darwin's theory has been falsified and refuted. The only plausible alternative to darwinian evolution is intelligent design.
The cell is irreducibly complex
https://reasonandscience.catsboard.com/t1299-abiogenesis-the-cell-is-irreducibly-complex
Abiogenesis? Impossible !!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ycJblRcgqXk
The cell is the irreducible, minimal unit of life 5
https://sci-hub.tw/https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-319-56372-5_8
Chemistry and the Missing Era of Evolution: A. Graham Cairns-Smith
We can see that at the time of the common ancestor, this system must already have been fixed in its essentials, probably through a critical interdependence of subsystems. (Roughly speaking in a domain in which everything has come to depend on everything else nothing can be easily changed, and our central biochemistry is very much like that.
https://sci-hub.tw/https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18260066
chemist Wilhelm Huck, professor at Radboud University Nijmegen
A working cell is more than the sum of its parts. "A functioning cell must be entirely correct at once, in all its complexity
https://sixdaysblog.com/2013/07/06/protocells-may-have-formed-in-a-salty-soup/
I like you.
Reply: Thanks :=))
Claim: I do have a soft spot for you, Rationalist. You have often been very patient with people (and others have been less patient with you). I commend you for this tolerance. You are a lone, tireless advocate of your faith and ID and with those as pre-conception/starting points, (not science or the truth), you stick well to it, but leave yourself open to criticism based on your pre-conception/motive and unnecessary god inclusions/conclusions.
Reply: My scientific approach is attempting to remove my bias as much as possible, and start with the evidence, and attempting to come to rational, case-adequate conclusions based on the evidence.
Claim: There were/are/will always be new things to fathom.
ID and IC (i.e. teleological) arguments can sound amazing and very compelling to non-specialists and especially when embellished with adjectives, comparisons to things that do not involve billions of years, miss much out, exaggerate and using unknown or unverifiable stats to bolster it with. But without positive evidence or facts or science, what else is there to convince with? Rainbows, snow drops, the movements of the stars and planets and so much more was once PROOF of God to most people. Because we had no current explanation.
Reply: I think theistic claims are not based on gaps ( sometimes we commit that error imho, admitted), but there are many positive claims and evidence can be provided, to bolster the claim of ID: God is a logical inference based on the evidence observed in the natural world. If a theist would say, ''We don't know what caused 'x', therefore, God.'', it would be indeed a 'God of the gaps' fallacy. What we say, IMHO is: ''Based on current knowledge, an intelligent creative agency is a better explanation than materialistic naturalism." If one is not arguing from ignorance, but rather reasoning from the available evidence to the best explanation, is it not rather ludicrous to accuse them of launching a 'god of the gaps argument'? Randomness is a hugely overplayed idea in modern science, a desperate attempt to fill a shrinking corner for materialist reductionism, just as the ‘God of the Gaps' is derided by said materialists as the alleged last resort of Intelligent Design proponents.
God of the gaps and incredulity, a justified refutation of ID arguments?
https://reasonandscience.catsboard.com/t1983-gaps-god-of-the-gaps-and-incredulitya-justified-refutation-of-id-arguments
Claim: A NEW magic trick/ID/IC finding, it must be real.
You have stated in your posts that the things you propose, ‘cannot’ have natural explanations. Quite a claim (without an, ‘if’). That is good, because it shows your confidence (if not evidence). And this is open to science to fill such gaps and show that you may be wrong. But (like my magician watcher), you have merely ignored new explanations and moved onto something else, and will continue to do so. Only when everything is totally and fully explained, (which is obviously never) can you be satisfied. This is totally, ‘god of the gaps’ and your infinite jump to, and regular inclusion of, God in your arguments/conclusion (your pre-conception) and failure to properly engage with specialist responses does not help your case as someone who is open mindedly sharing knowledge and research or wanting any answer that does not correspond to your beliefs. Your actions and declarations are typically conspiracy based and tick all of the boxes.
Reply: My claims are based on what we DO know, not the opposit. As an example:
Chance of intelligence to set up life:
100% We KNOW by repeated experience that intelligence produces all the things, as follows:
factory portals ( membrane proteins ) factory compartments ( organelles ) a library index ( chromosomes, and the gene regulatory network ) molecular computers, hardware ( DNA ) software, a language using signs and codes like the alphabet, an instructional blueprint, ( the genetic and over a dozen epigenetic codes ) information retrieval ( RNA polymerase ) transmission ( messenger RNA ) translation ( Ribosome ) signaling ( hormones ) complex machines ( proteins ) taxis ( dynein, kinesin, transport vesicles ) molecular highways ( tubulins ) tagging programs ( each protein has a tag, which is an amino acid sequence informing other molecular transport machines were to transport them.) factory assembly lines ( fatty acid synthase ) error check and repair systems ( exonucleolytic proofreading ) recycling methods ( endocytic recycling ) waste grinders and management ( Proteasome Garbage Grinders ) power generating plants ( mitochondria ) power turbines ( ATP synthase ) electric circuits ( the metabolic network ) computers ( neurons ) computer networks ( brain ) all with specific purposes.
Chance of unguided random natural events producing just a minimal functional proteome, not considering all other essential things to get a first living self-replicating cell,is:
Let's suppose, we have a fully operational raw material, and the genetic language upon which to store genetic information. Only now, we can ask: Where did the information come from to make the first living organism? Various attempts have been made to lower the minimal information content to produce a fully working operational cell. Often, Mycoplasma is mentioned as a reference to the threshold of the living from the non-living. Mycoplasma genitalium is held as the smallest possible living self-replicating cell. It is, however, a pathogen, an endosymbiont that only lives and survives within the body or cells of another organism ( humans ). As such, it IMPORTS many nutrients from the host organism. The host provides most of the nutrients such bacteria require, hence the bacteria do not need the genes for producing such compounds themselves. As such, it does not require the same complexity of biosynthesis pathways to manufacturing all nutrients as a free-living bacterium.
The simplest free-living bacteria is Pelagibacter ubique. 13 It is known to be one of the smallest and simplest, self-replicating, and free-living cells. It has complete biosynthetic pathways for all 20 amino acids. These organisms get by with about 1,300 genes and 1,308,759 base pairs and code for 1,354 proteins. 14 That would be the size of a book with 400 pages, each page with 3000 characters. They survive without any dependence on other life forms. Incidentally, these are also the most “successful” organisms on Earth. They make up about 25% of all microbial cells. If a chain could link up, what is the probability that the code letters might by chance be in some order which would be a usable gene, usable somewhere—anywhere—in some potentially living thing? If we take a model size of 1,200,000 base pairs, the chance to get the sequence randomly would be 4^1,200,000 or 10^722,000. This probability is hard to imagine but an illustration may help.
Claim: Crying wolf on each new apparent gap.
If all of the scientists could not fathom out a particular mechanism for something, it still means very little and does not imply anything, not least your god and there are multiple explanations, with natural ones most likely.
Reply: Eliminative inductions argue for the truth of a proposition by arguing that competitors to that proposition are false. ( Contrast this with Popperian falsification, where propositions are corroborated to the degree that they successfully withstand attempts to falsify them ) When the available option forms a dichotomy, just to option, A, or not A, they form a mutually exclusive and exhaustive class, eliminating all the competitors entails that the proposition is true. As Sherlock Holmes's famous dictum says: when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth. In this case, eliminative inductions, in fact, become deductions.
Genesis, vs secular science explanations of origins
https://reasonandscience.catsboard.com/t1642-creation-believe-it-or-not-part-1
We have observed atoms having forced that keep them together. We have not explained what that force is, and why it persists. It is assumed to persist for various reasons, but no cause has ever been found, scientifically. The very mechanisms of life: DNA, replication of DNA and other microbiological processes have been observed, but never explained, because their very activity is driven by data processes, which have no known independent cause or source. The force of gravity has been observed, characterized, and tested, but its source of energy has never been explained through naturalistic processes or observation. Logic and mathematics themselves have been analyzed and understood, but what is never explained through naturalistic or materialistic methods or science is why they exist, or what enforces them. They “just are”, and that assumption is the biggest gap materialists make as they seek to explain everything without God. The very foundations of reasoning are the concepts that things are repeatable, and therefore testable and predictable, yet there is no explanation for why things are consistent, from a materialistic perspective. Believers in the one true God, on the other hand, have answers for all of those questions, and it is because we have answers to those questions that we can advance scientific understanding and practical application to our universe and to daily life. There is nothing in the theistic worldview that negates or limits scientific discovery, because we expect a consistent level of logic, predictability, order, material processes and that God wants us to intelligently utilize our world, the senses, and brains we are endowed with. We discover laws of physics, math, and science, and understand they exist and persist because there is a lawgiver. They are there for our benefit, and we are free to discover them and utilize them. To suggest otherwise is merely a statement from ignorance. Ignorance of the existence of God.
Claim: Science lives for and thrives and depends upon gaps to fill and some take a long time, but God was no more present in the explanation when the problem arose than when the natural explanation was found and is no more so now. Some gaps of knowledge in the past existed for centuries, but it was not proof of a god and those who thought it was, have since been shown that they were wrong as the gaps were (as always, naturally) filled. To continue to find gaps, claim god and then continually have them filled, naturally, and ignore them is crying wolf and people will see your game (if they haven’t already) and see right through it. Lack of knowledge in an area is not proof of God or anything and we have so often found this to be the case, with a natural explanation.
Reply: Question: what is the better explanation for the origin of the following things?
https://reasonandscience.catsboard.com/t2245p25-abiogenesis-the-factory-maker-argument#7904
- factory portals with fully automated security checkpoints and control
- factory compartments
- a library index and fully automated information classification, storage, and retrieval program
- computer hardware
- software, a language using signs and codes like the alphabet, an instructional blueprint,
- information retrieval systems
- information transmission systems
- translation systems
- complex robotlike machines
- taxis adapted for cargo transport and delivery, with GPS systems
- highways
- tagging programs informing taxis were to transport goods
- factory assembly lines
- error check and repair systems
- recycling machines
- waste grinders and management
- power generating plants
- power turbines
- electric circuits
Chance, or intelligent design ?
The cell is a factory - adios materialism.
1. Computer hard-drives with high capacity of digital data storage, software programs based on languages using statistics, syntax, semantics, pragmatics, and apobetics, and the elaboration of complex instructional blueprints through those software programs, and data transmission systems (encoding, sending, decoding), all operated through computers and interlinked computer networks, which prescribe, drive, direct, operate and control interlinked compartmentalized factory parks making products for specific purposes, full of autonomous, robotlike high-tech production lines, high-efficiency power plants, complex high-tech robots with autoregulation and feedback loops, producing products with minimal error rates, that are transported through GPS driven transport carriers to their destination, all driven through energy made by high rotative turbines and power plants, are always set up by intelligent agents designing those things for purposeful goals.
2. Science has unraveled, that cells, strikingly, contain, and operate through all those things. Cells are cybernetic, ingeniously crafted cities full of factories. Cells contain information, which is stored in genes (books), and libraries (chromosomes). Cells have superb, fully automated information classification, storage, and retrieval programs ( gene regulatory networks ) which orchestrate strikingly precise and regulated gene expression. Cells also contain hardware - a masterful information-storage molecule ( DNA ) - and software, more efficient than millions of alternatives ( the genetic code ) - ingenious information encoding, transmission, and decoding machinery ( RNA polymerase, mRNA, the Ribosome ) - and highly robust signaling networks ( hormones and signaling pathways ) - awe-inspiring error check and repair systems of data ( for example mind-boggling Endonuclease III which error checks and repairs DNA through electric scanning ). Information systems, which prescribe, drive, direct, operate, and control interlinked compartmentalized self-replicating cell factory parks that perpetuate and thrive life. Large high-tech multimolecular robotlike machines ( proteins ) and factory assembly lines of striking complexity ( fatty acid synthase, non-ribosomal peptide synthase ) are interconnected into functional large metabolic networks. In order to be employed at the right place, once synthesized, each protein is tagged with an amino acid sequence, and clever molecular taxis ( motor proteins dynein, kinesin, transport vesicles ) load and transport them to the right destination on awe-inspiring molecular highways ( tubulins, actin filaments ). All this, of course, requires energy. Responsible for energy generation are high-efficiency power turbines ( ATP synthase )- superb power generating plants ( mitochondria ) and electric circuits ( highly intricate metabolic networks ). When something goes havoc, fantastic repair mechanisms are ready in place. There are protein folding error check and repair machines ( chaperones), and if molecules become non-functional, advanced recycling methods take care ( endocytic recycling ) - waste grinders and management ( Proteasome Garbage Grinders )
3. Chemist Wilhelm Huck, professor at Radboud University, Netherlands: A working cell is more than the sum of its parts. "A functioning cell must be entirely correct at once, in all its complexity. Cells, containing all those things are irreducibly complex. Without energy, information, or the basic building blocks fully synthesized, there would be no life. All this is best explained as a product of a super-intellect, an agency equipped with unfathomable intelligence - through the direct intervention, creative force, and activity of an intelligent cognitive agency, a powerful creator.
Claim: Parasites and who exposes who?
Your case study, like many, are good examples of complex structures. Question (to demonstrate open mindedness and searching for truth): How many times have gaps in scientific knowledge regarding evolution been discovered by a Creationist? So, regarding many of Michael Behe’s IC examples which have many hundreds of explanatory papers; there is nothing stopping a scientist who is a creationist from doing some research and discovering a natural explanation to something. Many believing Christians who are scientists contribute a lot to such findings. In fact, as far as I know, for every error that a scientist has inadvertently made, (or non-scientist that has been fraudulent for financial or notoriety gain) it has been someone who accepts evolution (and not creation) that has uncovered or exposed it. What does that say? That creationists aren’t following science very much and they are just parasitic, trolling through other people’s hard work for petty gain.
Reply: If you think only creationists reject evolution, you might know better after this:
Why Darwins theory of evolution does not explain biodiversity
https://reasonandscience.catsboard.com/t2623-why-darwins-theory-of-evolution-does-not-explain-biodiversity
Where Do Complex Organisms Come From?
https://reasonandscience.catsboard.com/t2316-evolution-where-do-complex-organisms-come-from
Claim: Here’s something I don’t know (Creationist). Let’s find out how (scientist).
Reply: Norman Geisler:
The creation-evolution debate is not religion versus science or the Bible versus science, it's about good science versus bad science. Likewise, it's not faith versus reason, its about reasonable faith, versus unreasonable faith.
Any worldview is limited in that it does not grant absolute truth, but only yields degrees of probability or likelihood. Bayesian inference is a method of statistical inference in which Bayes' theorem is used to update the probability of a hypothesis as more evidence or information becomes available. Bayesian inference has found application in a wide range of activities, including science, theology, and philosophy. After careful examination, all we can do is come to instant-deduction to the best explanation.
Claim: Try to find some positive evidence for a/your God and make predictions and test it and then you have some science that people can work with. I can share examples with you that would work if it helps, because there are multiple ways to tangibly test a god/supernatural/unexplained force.
Reply: How to recognize the signature of (past) intelligent actions
https://reasonandscience.catsboard.com/t2805-how-to-recognize-the-signature-of-past-intelligent-action
Either reality, our physical existence emerged by a lucky accident, spontaneous events of self-organization by unguided natural events in an orderly manner without external direction, purely natural processes and reactions, or through the direct intervention and creative force of an intelligent agency, a powerful creator.
Can:
randomness
unpredictable events
lack of orderly patterns
unfollow or intelligible patterns or combinations
improbable events
unpredictable movements
unplanned events
accidents
Spontaneous generations
control-less events
chaos
unguided
directionless
do the following ?
1. Produce objects in nature very similar to human-made things?
2. Make something based on mathematical principles?
3. Generate systems and networks functioning based on logic gates?
4. Create something purposefully made for specific goals?
5. Come up with specified complexity, the instructional blueprint, or a codified message?
6. and upon this, create irreducible complex and interdependent systems or artifacts composed of several interlocked, well-matched parts contributing to a higher end of a complex system that would be useful only in the completion of that much larger system?
7. Create order or orderly patterns
8. Invent hierarchically arranged systems of parts
9. Create artifacts that use might be employed in different systems ?(as the wheel, used in cars and airplanes )
10. Fine-tune systems and things?
That is all that we observe in the natural world, and it seems to me, intelligence explains following much better than no intelligence:
1. Machines, production lines, factories, and factory parks
2. Physical laws
3. The gene regulatory network
4. The eye to see, the ear to listen, the nose to smell, the brain to think
5. The genetic and epigenetic information
6. The flagellum, the Cell, the eye, etc.
7. Fibonacci curves are seen in Seashells, plants, cactus, etc.
8. Atoms - molecules - molecular machines - cells - multicellular organisms,
9. Sonar systems used in bats, dolphins, whales
10. The BigBang, cosmological constants, the fundamental forces of the universe, our galaxy, the earth ?
I have not enough faith to be an atheist.
Engagement warning.
I suggest that anyone who engages with Otangelo Grasso considers what they are getting into in terms of time, effort, motive and response and consider what you hope to gain from it and strap themselves in. You have been notified and may appear on his site! Here is some correspondence between Otangelo and bio-chemist professor Larry Moran. And Otangelo has been a regular Youtube discussion person on several shows:
https://sandwalk.blogspot.com/2017/02/trying-to-educate-creationist-otangelo.html
Claim: Who are YOU?
There are those who sit back and wonder at the mystery of things. Many of us. There are those who simply and lazily or like sheep or parasites, just attribute things to the unknown and many like to give this unknown a name, having done little if anything themselves. There are others who also try or want to find out in as much detail as they can about how things work. They have, over the centuries, unfolded the mystery of so much, which has often allowed us to make progress and make the understanding of science so much more exciting.
Reply: The science fathers were Christians.
https://reasonandscience.catsboard.com/t1452-what-good-has-the-christian-faith-brought-to-us
Who do you think coined the term scientist? It was William Whewell, an Anglican priest, and theologian, who also came up with the words physicist, cathode, anode, and many other commonly used scientific terms. Essentially, the very language used by scientists today was invented by a believer.
When Charles Darwin wrote The Origin of Species in 1859—the work that first proposed the theory of evolution—he was definitely a believer in God. It’s true that as he grew older, he began to doubt the existence of a personal Creator who cared about his creatures, but Darwin always struggled with his lack of faith. He was at times a Christian and at times an agnostic. But he never thought that his scientific theory was incompatible with the idea of God. Rather, he thought that while God did not have a direct hand in creating the different species of the world, he did indeed create the natural laws that governed the cosmos—including the laws of evolutionary development.
And what of the science of genetics—the means through which evolution supposedly takes place? According to proponents of evolutionary theory, it is only through genetic mutation and the process of natural selection that life on this planet is able to undergo gradual development. Who, then, was the father of this field of study? The answer is Gregor Mendel—an Augustinian friar and abbot of a Catholic monastery! This monk, botanist, and professor of philosophy was the man whose famous experiments on peas led to the formulation of the rules of heredity and to the proposal of the existence of invisible “genes”—which provide a basis for the science of modern genetics.
Well, then what about the big bang theory—the leading explanation of how our universe began? In fact, the man who proposed both the theory of the expansion of the universe as
well as the big bang theory of the origin of the universe—effectively changing the whole course of modern cosmology—was Father Georges Lemaître, a Belgian astronomer and Roman Catholic priest! A priest came up with the big bang theory! This cleric, who taught physics at the Catholic University of Leuven, delivered a famous lecture on his theories in 1933 that was attended by Albert Einstein in California. When Einstein heard Father Lemaître delineate his theory, he said: “This is the most beautiful and satisfactory explanation of creation to which I have ever listened. Now how could this be?
How could the father of genetics be a monk and the father of the big bang theory be a priest? Didn’t these men know what all modern atheists seem to take for granted—that the very theories they espoused contradict the idea of God and nullify the possibility of his existence? Didn’t they know that their belief in God was therefore absurd? Were they really that blind?
Or is there, perhaps, another explanation? Could it be that these great men of science were not blind at all, but rather that modern atheists fail to understand the most simple principle of rational thought— namely, that explaining the scientific process of how the universe came to be does not in any way explain why it came to be. It does not explain the fundamental mystery of existence itself. This mystery can never be explained by science.
None of these giants in the field of science was an atheist. All believed in a Supreme Being who created and designed the universe
Claim: A starter for you on this post topic, but you need to target specialists.
It would be great if you engaged with this process, with an open agenda, acknowledging and correcting and updating and accepting new knowledge to those people and on your site. Here’s one of those (this is a sneak, pre-publication preview) on the post topic and please do read the many other past, present and future articles addressing this (that don’t support your gaps of natural impossibility) and include them on your site and remove any of your arguments that they cover/explain:
https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.09.01.277582v1.full.pdf
I am not engaging otherwise in your article as it presents no evidence to consider (just alleged gaps) and I know so little about it, but I can assist in helping get you in contact with the authors or any of the authors in their research if it helps. They are your target audience on more complex areas, not lay folk. After you have engaged with specialists and demonstrated that you understand, have read the literature on it and have baffled them with your brilliance and they sing your praises, bring/share it here. People like evidence and compelling research. Not someone who just points and says, ‘well how do you explain that then?’.
Reply: Sure. Put them in touch with me.
A lack of responses definitely does not equate to, ‘people have no responses’, but a wrong site to share it.
Claim: If people do not respond to your posts, it may well be that there are no specialists who are here/able to respond or that people think you have nothing or little to present. No response on multiple sites does not mean people have no reply, but that it is not the place to post it. I do emphasise that there are multiple research papers, mostly peer reviewed, that do directly address the things you raise, and I’d be very keen to see you reflect, fairly, those responses after you read them.
Reply: I have done so with Dimiter Kunnev, and he has not engaged, and not replied to my inquiries. He just has accused me of doing cherry picking. See here:
A reply to Dimiter Kunnev
https://reasonandscience.catsboard.com/t1661p25-translation-through-ribosomes-amazing-nano-machines#8008
Claim: You use statistics which are totally unknowns.
Reply: No. They are known.
https://reasonandscience.catsboard.com/t2508-abiogenesis-uncertainty-quantification-of-a-primordial-ancestor-with-a-minimal-proteome-emerging-through-unguided-natural-random-events#5399
Bit by Bit: The Darwinian Basis of Life
Gerald F. Joyce Published: May 8, 2012
https://journals.plos.org/plosbiology/article?id=10.1371/journal.pbio.1001323
Even the sequence of a simple ribozyme of 40 mer has 10^24 possible compositions. To represent all of these compositions at least once, and thus to establish a certainty that this simple ribozyme could have materialized, requires 27 kg of RNA chains, which classifies spontaneous emergence as a highly implausible event.
For an enzyme to be functional, it must fold in a precise three-dimensional pattern. A small chain of 150 amino acids making up an enzyme must be tested within the cell for 10^12 different possible configurations per second, taking 10^26 ( 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000) years to find the right one. This example comprises a very, very, very small degree of the chemical complexity of a human cell.
Claim:So often, the erroneous stats did not even apply if the scenario that is presented were true, which they are so often not. It is emotionalising the case to try to convince people of something which is not there by scientific presentation. I don’t even know how you could present a paper on a lack of knowledge, rather than additional knowledge, which is what you are trying to do. ‘Here is a possible explanation’ rather than your, ‘I can’t explain this’ is the way to go. If you can’t present a positive knowledge case to peer review, why should people take you seriously or not equally consider any other conspiracy or proposal lacking evidence?
Reply: Such a paper has just been published in the journal of theoretical Biology. It has gone through regular peer review, and posits explicitly intelligent design.
Using statistical methods to model the fine-tuning of molecular machines and systems
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0022519320302071?via%3Dihub
Claim: I’m being picked on because…I am hard pressed to think of any Creationist who truly or independently came to the creation conclusion based on a sound scientific education and understanding and with no theological influential play involved and who understands evolution even at a fairly low level.
Reply: See here:
Where Do Complex Organisms Come From?
https://reasonandscience.catsboard.com/t2316-evolution-where-do-complex-organisms-come-from
How does biological multicellular complexity and a spatially organized body plan emerge?
https://reasonandscience.catsboard.com/t2990-how-does-biological-multicellular-complexity-and-a-spatially-organized-body-plan-emerge
