no evolutionary scientist believes life arose by pure chance

[spinoza99]

over at why evolutionistrue.com I came across a rather surprising admission

http://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com ... -the-cell/

The keystone argument of Signature of the Cell is that chance, by itself, cannot account for the genetic information found in the genomes of organisms. I agree. And so does every evolutionary scientist, I presume. Why, then, spend chapter after chapter and hundreds of pages of elegant prose to argue the point?

Mathew Cobb

he doesn't say it in the article but I'm pretty sure most scientists believe life arose due to some law, also known as necessity. But I thought many believe that life arose through a combination of chance and necessity.


I was wondering how many here agree with Cobb

[Millefleur]

[Gawdzilla Sama]

Why lie?

Signature of the Cell offers Intelligent Design (ID) as the alternative explanation to chance in order to account for genetic information.

[Feck]

ID sucks It is a disingenuous lie , At best the proponents if ID in all it's ugly forms have let their subconscious confirmation bias colour how they think about any evidence they are exposed to and at worst they are a bunch is hateful fuckers who are prepared to lie and to misguide others with a blatant misrepresentation of the facts .Just like the Discovery Institute . IDists are not looking for any truth they are looking for loopholes in current scientific knowledge into which they can crowbar their fucking God ...A god That seems to be linked with the babble and all it's bullshit BTW for no reason apart from that's what they want to find .

When faced with some thing new and complicated they will say it's irreducibly complex ,by the time real scientists have explained it in great detail the IDists stop talking about it and go back to searching the scientific papers for some more evidence that their god is 'possible ' .

When science says it has difficulty explaining Quantum entanglement there pops up an IDist who triumphantly expounds that 'Science can't explain everything ..the only possible Explanation is that god whispers in the ear of the second particle where it's meant to be and how it's meant to behave . One day science will discover the ears on atoms ?? or do they have minds but not ears ?

ID ists are awful fond of long explanations knowing that the average reader will accept their assumptions when worn down by tedium and really really fond of quoting Genetics and explaining It couldn't happen by chance which is almost the most annoying Straw man Ever .


'You can't explain this' and 'this couldn't happen by random' Have not and Never ever could give any evidence for god (s) Especially as in each and every case when someone studies it,it turns out that the ID claim is bullshit .

Sorry that you are scared of the dark sorry that when you are dead you are dead sorry that you have no purpose sorry you are just a speck of dust catching the light for a tiny time in a very very old and very big universe . Please do not let your fear and arrogance lead you to invent a god .

[charlou]

One day science will discover the ears on atoms ?? or do they have minds but not ears ?

.. Why ... that would make them more advanced than worms.

[drl2]

Mutations are random, propagation of mutations is not. It's quite simple, really:

Chance + Selection > Chance.

He's pointing out that the cdesign proponentsists are cranking out volumes of long-winded attacks against a theory they haven't even bothered to try to understand, or are being outright dishonest about.

[Loki]

Theory can be tested because it makes predictions about reality.

What predictions does ID make about reality spinoza?

[spinoza99]

Loki, what predictions does random mutation make about reality?


To answer your question, if you find information, the cause will be intelligence. So let's say you find something that looks like the rosetta stone, you can predict that its cause will be intelligence.

[drl2]

he doesn't say it in the article but I'm pretty sure most scientists believe life arose due to some law, also known as necessity. But I thought many believe that life arose through a combination of chance and necessity.

Meant to address this part in my first reply:

This sentence couldn't be made more meaningless if you separated the words with little pictures of airplanes and fire engines.

Necessity is a human concept; the universe doesn't "need" life. We say that event X is necessary for event Y to occur, but there's no reason to believe there's a grand meta-necessity that means events X and Y "need" to occur. You're inventing your very own "law" and assuming without evidence that it's a widely held belief.

[spinoza99]

What I mean by necessity is better described with the word inevitability. If you shine a light, it is inevitable that the photons will cover 300,000 km per second.

[drl2]

Theory can be tested because it makes predictions about reality.

What predictions does ID make about reality spinoza?

it predicts that there's money to be made by assuming PT Barnum was right.

[Gawdzilla Sama]

Spinmeister, why did you lie in the OP?

[charlou]

Loki, what predictions does random mutation make about reality?

That's just silly. Really .. stoppit.

[charlou]

To answer your question, if you find information, the cause will be intelligence. So let's say you find something that looks like the rosetta stone, you can predict that its cause will be intelligence.

How do you draw this conclusion?

You actually think the 'information' is placed for us to find?


But seriously .. these are pitfalls of the abuse of anthropomorphic terminology ...

[spinoza99]

gawdzilla,

i really don't even know what lie you're accusing me of. you know i'm an IDer. all i said was, look, i didn't know evolutionary scientists thought this way, then i asked if people on rationalia think in the same way. basically i was asking a question. not even opening a debate.