All right, I know that there are millions of threads about this topic, and I really didn’t want to post one myself, but I have two things that I’m really curious about.
I am no longer a creationist, but I do have some problems believing in evolution too.
There are a couple points against evolution I’d like to hear your thoughts about (and no, the point of this thread isn’t disproving evolution.). Even though I am no longer a creationist, I am posting passages from a creationist book because I think that it raise valid points that I’d like to hear addressed.
Oh, and I’m sorry that this OP is so long.
Ok, Point 1: Paraconformity
Point 2: The Origin of Life: DNA and Protein
Again, from the book:
(I’ll skip the definition of DNA and proteins and how they work together.)
(I’ll skip the part where he goes over what’s wrong with Miller’s Spark Chamber)
I am no expert in the first area you describe, but you need to keep in mind that it was an extraordinary event for anything to be fossilized. Only a very small percentage of every plant and animal that has ever lived was turned into a fossil, and the conditions had to be just right. So I personally have no problem understanding that those conditions may have been right at some times and not at others, thus causing an apparent “skip.” I certainly don’t think it implies any major problem like the author of that book does.
As far as the second point, I would remind the author (and you) that evolution deals with life after it began. Do we know precisely how life began? No. Do we have suspicions? Yes. Is it in any way close to as solid as the theory of evolution itself? No. Can it therefore be used as a legitimate attack on the theory of evolution? No.
There is some thought, perhaps quite a bit, that one reason you can’t seem to get DNA to do the things you want it to do in an “origins” model is because DNA was not the original molecule. Perhaps it was RNA, and then DNA came later. We don’t know. And unlike creationists, scientists don’t have a problem admitting that they don’t know. Again, however, since this is not talking about the theory of evolution itself, it really doesn’t matter as far as that goes.
Incidentally, this may be cause for a separate thread, but I’m curious: You say you are no longer a creationist but have problems with evolution as well. What caused you to give up creationism?
OK, I’m not an expert in the field of geology, but delibrately ignoring evidence is a favourite of creationists, after a little googling I found this in answer to point 1:
Well, as I said, I’m not trying to disprove evolution, so please, don’t get the wrong idea.
That is a good point about not everything fossilizing, but you would think that in 25 million years, that something would. But, maybe not. I don’t know.
As for your response to the second point, are you saying that how life began isn’t part of evolution? I’m sorry, but I will have to disagree with you on that.
You need to remember that erosion didn’t begin at the start of the modern era, too. Rock that was formed in past eras was also subject to erosion, which would make that rock “disappear” in locations that were subject to heavy erosion in later eras than the rock was laid down in. Erosion isn’t absolutely uniform throughout the world in all times. There are hundreds of millions of years of strata “missing” that once filled the gorge of the Grand Canyon, just to note a rather dramatic example.
There are a number of evolutionary processes, some of which apply in certain circumstances, some of which apply in others. It could very well be that none of these processes explain the origin of life; however, that does not invalidate the fact that they do explain what happens thereafter. Abiogenesis is not the least bit crucial to any evolutionary theory.
I don’t know if he is, but I certainly am. That a given location does not have the complete geologic column is only to be expected – how much limestone is being laid down today in, say, Iowa? (Lots is in the Gulf of Mexico, but that’s not Iowa.)
Approached by a fundy with this sort of argument, I would grab his Bible, tear out the twelve minor prophets, hand it back to him, and ask him where they are – and if they’re not present in his book, then how does he feel that they can be cited as Scripture?
To wit – the Silurian occurs above the Ordovician and/or below the Devonian in every place where two or all three periods are represented in the rock, with the vanishingly rare exceptions of folding that has overturned the rocks in a particular area (as in taking three sheets of paper in both hands and moving one’s hands together, causing them to arch up – eventually they will fold over in a loop).
If that area of Indiana was above water during the Silurian or the Silurian rocks were eroded away before the Devonian rocks were laid down, then it is quite possible that a nonconformity occurred where Devonian rock was laid down atop Ordovician – and that does not contradict the principle that where Silurian rock occurs with Ordovician or Devonian, it will overlay the first and be found beneath the second.
Evolutionary theory deals with adaptations to an environment by organisms that already exist. The origin of those organisms is outside the study of evolution.
Even so, there is a lot of biological study and theorising on the origin of life and progress is slowly being made. One of the problems that non-scientists have with science is impatience. Just because evolution can’t explain origins there is no reason to claim some supernatural explanation is needed.
In the site TalkOrigins there is this primer on Evolutionary Biology that might help. It is tough going for the novice in spots. It is even tough going for someone who is not a novice but is also not a specialist. However, some diligent study should help clear up your ideas on just exactly what constitutes evolutionary theory.
Joel, good question. I’ve enjoyed the various posts. You quoted the following:
Unless I’m completly missing something, and I well may be, this is just foolisness. We are nothing but a chemical factory. Every cell, as far as I understand things, does nothing but make, accept, and analyze various chemical compounds. It’s why we can take pills (which supply a missing or needed chemical) for so many ills and problems.
You also expressed some problem with the idea that evolution can’t explain the origins of life. There’s no reason to think it should be able to. Evolution is the process of accumulating changes in the DNA pattern. For something like a billion years the Earth was only a sea that over time came to contain various amino acids and other little building block thingies that I’m not really sure what are. There were, no doubt, countless trillions of interactions every year between these building blocks. A self replicating entity only had to happen once out of all those opportunities. And even then RNA and DNA may have been millions of years in the future. There would have been no fossil record of any of this.
The problems with the geological record, as positited in your first quote, have been covered nicely already.
Always remember, science does not promise answers of any sort, easy, hard, or mind numbing. It only gives us the process to come clawing, digging, and sometimes stepping back a little to try again to attain understanding.
—I am no expert in the first area you describe, but you need to keep in mind that it was an extraordinary event for anything to be fossilized.—
Indeed, during Darwin’s time, no one really thought that the fossil record would be anywhere near as rich as it is today. Darwin certainly didn’t expect it to provide much more than they already had, and his arguments for his theory were largely based on things like homology, the particular distribution of certain species across the globe, etc. not on the idea that we’d find a more complete fossil record.
Distribution was actually a more major concern back then than most people today realize, especially in the debates between the two major schools of racial creation.
Although others in this thread have pointed out that abiogenesis has nothing to do with evolution, I’d still like to take a crack at the abiogenesis-related claims quoted in the OP:
Oh, brother.
First off, although the important areas of DNA do “code” for protein, DNA is not itself directly involved in protein synthesis. A portion of a DNA strand first has to be transcribed into a simpler nucleic acid, called RNA. It is RNA, not DNA, that directly controls the machinery of protein production. The earliest protein-based life forms on Earth probably relied entirely on bits of RNA to carry their genetic heritage from one generation to the next.
Secondly, even the RNA strand itself isn’t in direct contact with the proteins it codes for. An intermediary structure called a ribosome is responsible for reading the RNA and assembling proteins out of available amino acids. A ribosome is big enough to be seen (barely) in a light microscope; with the RNA strand on one side and its protein progeny on the other, there is no danger of the new protein harming the RNA.
Finally, recent discoveries have raised the tantalizing possibility that protein synthesis is not necessary for RNA to replicate itself. Sure, the modern cellular machinery contains enzymes (proteins) which facilitate RNA and DNA replication, but certain strands of RNA have been observed to make slow, crude copies of themselves even without these protein-based catalytic helpers. The notion that the first living creatures on earth were merely self-replicating strands of RNA is called the RNA World Hypothesis. This hypothesis is not without its problems, some of them serious (e.g. lab-synthesized self-replicating RNA doesn’t tend to last very long), but it very shows that life arising on its own is not “impossible.”
Why does the author of that piece refer to interactions between DNA and proteins as reactions between acids and bases? DNA stands for Deoxyribonucleic acid. Proteins are made out of amino acids. Where are the bases this?
Or did the author just confuse a chemical base with the term “base pair”?
