A living organism would suffice just fine.
Does the fact that a majority of the path from inert chemicals to living organism has been mapped make it plausible (though not necessarily true) to you that biochemists are on the right track? In other words, could you conditionally accept the theories of abiogenesis on the strength of those experiments?
Royal Sampler wrote:
Would a self-replicating RNA strand qualify as a “living organism” for your purposes? 'Cause we have created self-replicating RNA strands in the laboratory. (We just haven’t come up with a convincing mechanism by which self-replicating RNA strands could have arisen on their own, gevin the conditions of the ancient Earth. Yet.)
Well do bear in mind that a convinced Christian is someone belonging to one (of many) sects of two separate branches of one of the world religions, who relies entirely on 4 gospels written about 30 - 100 years after the (alleged) Resurrection.
Note that there is no way to disprove Christianity, since God could have faked the evidence to ‘test your faith’.
A convinced ‘evolutionary’ is someone who accepts the massive amount of scientic evidence that backs the theory of evolution.
Note that if new evidence shows evolution is not a valid theory, we will all move smoothly to a new theory.
Well I was wondering where this Creator came from. Does that invalidate all religions?
(I should add that I admire the teachings of Jesus and Buddha, while being very depressed by some of the stuff in the Old Testament. But I use evidence to decide what to believe in. There’s none for Christianity, and a lot for evolution.)
It certainly can, but I don’t see any evidence of RS having done that in this thread yet.
I know he hasn’t (yet), but phrases like this are only used by religionists* :
*the equivalent of evolutionists
It may be helpful to point out that being a Christian and a believer in evolutionary theory and/or abiogenesis are not mutually exclusive.
This is not particularly hard to do if one is willing to accept that Genesis may not be a literal account.
Try wading through, or at least browsing, this:
http://www.google.com/search?q=cache:fauwbtkXP3I:www.pd.infn.it/~rnobili/PDF_Files/theorbiol.pdf+Turing%2BShannon%2Bvon%2BNeumann%2BPrigogine+biogenesis&hl=en
It doesn’t answer your question about how life evolved from non-living matter, but it at least reveals more about the various ways in which scientists are approaching the problem. The origin of life is a hard problem.
Squink:
When I click on your link, I get the following message from google:
“Your search - cache:fauwbtkXP3I:www.pd.infn.it/~rnobili/PDF_Files/theorbiol.pd f Turing+Shannon+von+Neumann+Prigogine biogenesis - did not match any documents.”
You might want to try removing the space between the “theorbiol.pd” and the “f”, like so:
Looks like the URL parser on this message board did the same thing to my post as it did to yours, squink.
Let’s try a direct link to the underlying .PDF file instead:
Quote-------------------------------------------------------
It may be helpful to point out that being a Christian and a believer in evolutionary theory and/or abiogenesis are not mutually exclusive.
This is not particularly hard to do if one is willing to accept that Genesis may not be a literal account.
As a biologist I know puts it, “It all depends on what you mean by a ‘day’.”
You know, as in, “on the seventh day HE created beer.”
“You’re dead. You’re all dead” – Frank Sinatra
That’s odd, the original link I gave works for me. Must be some bit of browser evolution I haven’t “upgraded” to yet.
Mmm, I still think we ought to wait for him to actually voice his opinions before we disagree with what we assume they are.
Libertarian Pretty much summed up my feelings on this one Here:
Damn, poly. It is posts like this that challenge me to bolster the quality my debate. Thanks.
Not quite on point, but not entirely off either. On Friday I attended a lecture by Lawrence Krauss on the history of an individual atom. Went back to when the universe was the size of a baseball, until an atom of hydrogen ended up in the glass of water he was drinking.
He talked of a number of “miraculous” occurences that led to the universe being as it is today.
One of his last words, which I will try to paraphrase, was that two things we know are that the universe is really really old, and really really big. And in a universe that is really really old and big, really unusual things can happen. In fact, they are happening all the time.
But Mangetout, these people are not like us, and they ask peculiar questions in funny ways that offend our sensibilities. Doesn’t that make it our duty as Americans, much less scientists, to beat on them, belittle their intellect and tell them that their socks smell funny ? 
There doesn’t seem to be a good introductory level link that describes the theoretical foundations behind self replicating systems and biogenesis. I’d like to be proven wrong on this, but the OP certainly deserves something more than a bit of handwaving about Miller/Urey and self replicating RNA.
Ok, but if he does come out as a literal believer, I’m going to type ‘told you so’ in capitals!
I could quibble about the use of ‘Christian’ instead of ‘literal Bible believer’, the fact that the Institute doesn’t do Research, the use of the word ‘evolutionist’ as if this was some fanatical creed instead of standard scientific research, and finally the use of a scientific conclusion when the poster doesn’t understand the science themselves.
But I’ll concentrate instead on the tone of the answers you give (all of which intend to make good points), and rephrase them as I would put it:
Poster1: I guess you believe pi = 3, huh?
glee: It is important to look calmly at the evidence, not just rely on ‘I believe something, so it must be true.’
Poster2: The Bible is so full of contradictions that I can’t even list them all here.
glee: if you are saying that the Bible is literally true, then how do you account for some of the contradictions elsewhere in it?
Poster3: What a moron. You obviously don’t know anything about thermodynamics.
glee: I think you have a misunderstanding of thermodynamics.
Poster4: Your little god is stupid. Why did he murder all those people in the old testament?
glee: There are many different world religions. Christianity is split into two major branches. Each of these is subdivided into sects. Which is the true one?
Poster5: The ICR is the most dangerous, filth infested organization on earth. You are too, having fallen under their spell.
glee: The ICR do not do scientific research. They are a religious organisation, who defend their position no matter what evidence turns up.
Your ‘effective’ examples are certainly polite. But they labour under the misconception that the laws of thermodynamics require Christian backing to be proved true.
This attitude is similar to the Inquisition and Galileo. Science works, no matter what religious people think.
If there were no Christian scientists to quote, what would you do?
Poster3: Evolution is not in conflict with the second law because the second law applies to closed systems, like the universe for example, where there is no energy coming in from outside. But look at the earth. It isn’t closed at all. Plenty of energy is supplied to the earth from the sun! Can you think of ways that life on earth uses this energy from the sun?
Look: the truth - and no religion in sight!
Poster4: Many Christians here at Straight Dope have told me that God calls upon His believers to have a right understanding, to question, to seek truth. I wish you much success in your quest for answers. I don’t share your faith, but I’m not your enemy either.
So if a Christian tells you that science is evil, or that evolution directly contradicts the word of God or that evolutionists are going to Hell, we should believe them?
Glee: If he comes out with any unsupportable claims or arguments, then I’ll be joining in with the debate against them (If I’m able), and please feel free to say you told me so, but let’s not frighten people off with aggression before we’ve tried patience (OK, I know everybody here is tired to death of the whole creationist thing, having seen it a million times, but each individual creationist newcomer isn’t aware of our pain; IMHO, we shouldn’t make the newcomers suffer simply because other people have made us tear our hair out, that is, we shouldn’t make them suffer until they have given us just cause).
There is just the faintest possibility that by reasoned debate, we can convince the creationist (generally, not specifically you RS, as you’ve said you’re sitting on the fence) to examine the evidence with open, unbiased eyes.
Dinsdale, I stand chastized, and Royal Sampler, my apologies for the sarcasm. However, may I offer in partial exculpation that (a) this is perhaps the 4000th request from somebody to explain the topic, generally from a staunch Biblical Creationist stance, and it’s been a rough month for everybody, leading me to be less than irenic in my responses.
Obviously my response addresses the Biblical Creationist by asking him about what the Founder of his faith said was the most important thing to do. As such, it bounced off Royal Sampler, who was not playing the usual game. It’s still a worthwhile question for someone wanting to argue Biblical Creationism to answer, though. (Unless, for some strange reason, they believe in the literalness of Genesis 1-3 but not in the literalness of the Gospels – improbable, but we’ve had stranger things happen here!)
Best answer is that the process hit on above is simply outlined in numerous popular books as the probable origin of life in the absence of a deity whoppin’ it up by supernatural means, and for which there is, necessarily, no proof, since we do not at this time have a reducing atmosphere nor any bodies of water containing extensive dissolved organic compounds, and inadequate time to generate in the laboratory the sequence from ammonia, methane, water, and C0[sub]2[/sub] to amino acids to coacervates to prokaryotes. Plus there are adequate and ubiquitous microorganisms to consume any step in the process before it can move to the next step.
R.S., has the question been resolved to your satisfaction?
BTW, your second comment, about the creation of matter, is completely separate from the creation of life. Matter itself would appear to have been either (a) always around – the “steady state” scientific theory and the teachings of many polytheisms, (b) the result of the command “Let there be light” or © the coincidental result of a fluctuation in the vacuum sufficient to give rise to a particle-antiparticle pair that did not immediately annihilate each other. In either of the latter cases, photons confined at high density resulted in the creation of proton/antiproton and electron/positron pairs that eventually formed our present universe. The question at that point is whether a God had a hand in it; for other reasons, I believe One did; Czarcasm and others “have no need of that hypothesis.”
Does that help to resolve your question?
anyone catch the most recent evolution program on PBS? It was a great series. I enjoyed it. However, the final episode considered evolution vs creation, and I found myself upset for one reason; 1) although creationist propaganda could be seen throughout, equally dismissive proponents of evolution were nowhere to be found. that is, whereas hooting and hollering christians abounded, evolutionists suffered those fools lightly.
sorry, I don’t mean to make this such an anti-creation anti-christian post, but lately the nonsense is garnering to mcuh consideration. I blame dubbya.
Oh well, I did some ant-christian propaganda spreading this weekend, so I suppose I’m on the opposite end with the same vehemence.
Lolo
poly, please accept my apologies. I intended no chastening, chastigation, chasteness, or whatever.
I intended merely a heartfelt appreciation of your approach, as a thinking and eloquent believer. Made me feel guilty about my too often knee-jerk rationality and self inflating feelings of superiority over believers.