Post by MarkEPost by RonOPost by MarkEDoes the following quotation demonstrate that the naturalistic origin
of life involves amplifying a vanishingly small probability (i.e. the
probability of spontaneous generation in a jar, with small
probabilistic resources of space and time available), to a larger
probability (i.e. the universe over its entire history)?
That is, does it demonstrate that the naturalistic origin of life is
spontaneous generation, only with more time and space than Redi and
Pasteur allowed?
______
"At this point, I introduced Louis Pasteur’s pasteurization
experiment, which convinced the world that even microorganisms could
not be generated spontaneously.
At the time spontaneous generation was considered to also be special
creation. It was considered to be God's continued creation. Pasteur
demonstrated that this was not happening. It had a religious
connection. There was some belief that it might be happening using
organic material (plant and animal dead material) and Pasteur
demonstrated that this was not the case. Contamination with existing
lifeforms was found to be the basis for the misconception.
Actually, fair point. Doing a bit of digging, some proponents of
spontaneous generation regarded it as evidence of a "life force" in non-
living matter (e.g. Aristotle, and John Needham 1745).
The Reason to Believe old earth creationists and, apparently, exIDiots
continue to believe that life is continuing to be created. They used to
claim to be intelligent design advocates, and they had their constant
"recreation" model for how life has evolved on this planet.
Neanderthals are considered to be recreations of modern humans or
something like Homo erectus. Speciation within a genera was claimed to
be due to recreation. The finches or lizards could be recreated to be a
little different from each other and could even be able to interbreed.
The creator was using the existing genetic template to recreate a new
species to be just a little different from the original.
It would be difficult to confirm recreation because the creator
obviously does it when no one is looking. It is always happening, but
we only see the results when we identify the new species. They wanted
it to be special creation and not creation through biological evolution.
In some old post I once suggested that they could place hermetically
sealed containers on the islands that they thought the recreations were
happening and see if anything popped into one. It is about the only way
that you could demonstrate that recreation was happening.
Post by MarkEPost by RonONone of this changes the fact that the origin of life on this planet
is not Biblical. It really doesn't matter if life arose by natural
mechanisms or not the Bible is still wrong about how it occurred. You
likely do need to have a discussion with Denton as to why he has his
Deistic notions. My guess is that he is only deistic in terms of his
god's activity with the creation and evolution of this universe, but
he likely believes in an interactive god with the human result of
biological evolution on this planet because he still claims to
probably be Christian. He seems to be agnostic only to other people's
religious beliefs.
Ron Okimoto
Structuralism as a modern incarnation by Denton and others?
"Form is in this view not shaped by natural selection, but by "self-
organizing properties of particular categories of matter" and by "cosmic
fine-tuning of the laws of nature".
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Structuralism_(biology)
Denton likely was not influenced by structuralism. He just retreated to
the Big Bang for his claim of what would have been required to have been
designed by a creator, and claims that the creator created our universe
in such a way as to make us or something like us possible. He
understands that it took around 8 billion years to produce the elements
that our solar system is made of produced by dying stars. Our earth
would eventually form as it did in a place in the galaxy where life
could survive and he doesn't require any designer interference in the
origin of life, nor the evolution of life on earth. The other ID perps
have never accepted Denton's deistic notions, and Denton quit the ID
scam before the bait and switch started to go down. He probably needed
the money and came back to continue the ID perp's effort of using
intelligent design as bait. He has been a prolific author since his
return the ID scam, but the Discovery Institute doesn't seem to support
those books.
Ron Okimoto
Post by MarkEPost by RonOPost by MarkEAnd all students agreed on that conclusion. The following text is a
record of my conversation with my students afterward.
Tan. Are you confident that the experiments by Redi and Pasteur have
proved that spontaneous generation is impossible?
Students. Yes.
Tan. Sure?
Students. Yes.
Tan. Does it matter what sizes the jars/bottles were?
Students. No.
Tan. Does it matter how long they waited?
Students. No.
Tan. Sure?
Students. Yes.
Tan. What if the bottles are very big? I mean very big, really big.
Still positive?
Students. Yes.
Tan. How about this big? (A picture of the globe was shown.) Still
positive?
Students. Uh… (Some hesitated.)
Tan. How about this big? (A picture of the visible universe of the
Hubble deep field was shown.) Still positive?
Students. (Silence.)
How about you?"
Tan, Change; Stadler, Rob. The Stairway To Life: An Origin-Of-Life
Reality Check (pp. 179-180). Evorevo Books. Kindle Edition.