Collective Cluelessness

No, this isn’t a post about TSZ. It’s about how to get abiogenesis without a designer and how to build a nanocar.

We have no idea how the basic set of molecules, carbohydrates, nucleic acids, lipids and proteins, were made and how they could have coupled in proper sequences, and then transformed into the ordered assemblies until there was the construction of a complex biological system, and eventually to that first cell. Nobody has any idea on how this was done when using our commonly understood mechanisms of chemical science. Those that say that they understand are generally wholly uninformed regarding chemical synthesis.

“Those that say oh this is well worked out, they know nothing, nothing, about chemical synthesis. Nothing.”

From a synthetic chemical perspective, neither I nor any of my colleagues can fathom a prebiotic molecular route to construction of a complex system. We cannot even figure out the prebiotic routes to the basic building blocks of life: carbohydrates, nucleic acids, lipids and proteins. Chemists are collectively bewildered. Hence I say that no chemist understands prebiotic synthesis of the requisite building blocks let alone their assembly into a complex system. That’s how cluelss we are.

“Nobody understand this. So if your professors say it’s all worked out, your teachers say it’s all worked out, they don’t know what they are talking about. It is not worked out.”

Given our current level of knowledge, the claim that life arose by naturalistic means must surely qualify as an extraordinary claim. A claim for which not only is there not extraordinary evidence, but a claim for which there is no objective empirical evidence whatsoever. You may as well claim to believe in magic. Sure, let’s be skeptical. You first.

265 thoughts on “Collective Cluelessness

  1. colewd: Question: What is causing large scale evolutionary change.
    Answer: We don’t know at this point.

    Phew! For a moment there, I thought future research had been blocked, but you saved the day!

    So, what are you saying, destroy the textbooks and start from absolute scratch? Or do we keep anything as a starting point? If so, what?

  2. Frankie: OMagain is demonstrating its collective cluelessness

    If you were less coy about when you thought the designer did it’s DESIGNING this all would be much simpler 😛

  3. Unguided evolution is useless and sterile. It doesn’t produce any predictions nor can it be modelled.

    With ID, just like GAs, organisms were intelligently designed to evolve. They were given the ability to adapt for themselves. They are not waiting for some happenstance change to come along to help or hurt them. They are in control. But sometimes accidents do occur and that is why we see disease and deformities.

    So if you want disease and deformities unguided evolution is yours. If you want complex adaptations then evolution by intelligent design is what you need.

  4. Frankie: They are in control. But sometimes accidents do occur and that is why we see disease and deformities.

    And a 99% extinction rate. How incompetent is the designer, huh?

  5. Evolutionists have a 100% failure rate when it comes to testing the debated claims of their position. They must be really incompetent. 😛

  6. Richardthughes: And a 99% extinction rate.

    Just think of all the extinction that must have gone on along the path to first life. And no evidence for any of it.

  7. OMagain,

    So, what are you saying, destroy the textbooks and start from absolute scratch? Or do we keep anything as a starting point? If so, what?

    Good question 🙂

  8. Flint: You typically show an avid willingness to swallow the camel (some magical invisible all powerful indetectible entity performed something undefined by unknown means) while straining at the gnat (that well-understood physical and chemical process can produce physical and chemical results).

    Which post of mine is this addressing?

    Are you actually asserting that there is a well-understood physical and chemical process that led to the origin of life? Everyone else here seems to be denying that and claiming that it’s foolish to ask for one. The entire OOL field may as well pack up and go home. Perhaps they can get jobs as manuscript copiers.

  9. Mung: Which post of mine is this addressing?

    The post where you couldn’t distinguish between organic chemistry and monks copying texts.

    Are you actually asserting that there is a well-understood physical and chemical process that led to the origin of life?

    Yes, of course. What’s not known is what pathway was followed. Today, many candidates have been suggested, none of them impossible and none of them requiring any gods.

    Everyone else here seems to be denying that and claiming that it’s foolish to ask for one. The entire OOL field may as well pack up and go home. Perhaps they can get jobs as manuscript copiers.

    Life works according to well understood physical and chemical processes. How those processes got organized into life as we know it is the target of quite a bit of active research. I don’t see many people arguing that research is foolish since we don’t know what it will find — except maybe those who already know goddidit and don’t care how, or those who find it more intellectually satisfying to throw our hands into the air and admit intractable ignorance.

    (and yes, I understand that if research determines one testable pathway, that doesn’t mean it’s the pathway that was followed.)

  10. Frankie: Intelligent Design has theological implications, but it is not a theological enterprise. Theology does not own intelligent design. Intelligent design is not a evangelical Christian thing, or a generally Christian thing or even a generally theistic thing. Anyone willing to set aside naturalistic prejudices and consider the possibility of evidence for intelligence in the natural world is a friend of intelligent design.

    Wow, I guess it just looks that way, I would add conservative to the list of what ID isn’t.

    Sorry about you bad luck but if you exclude a divine designer, ID must have an undesigned designer caused by nature forces, If there is such an undesigned designer ID is falsified by your own criteria, Frankie. The first designer must be divine.

    ‘He goes on to say:

    Intelligent design requires neither a meddling God nor a meddled world. For that matter, it doesn’t even require there be a God.

    No meddling , no design, no God, no ID.

  11. colewd:
    newton,

    Depends how you define life but in my mind you need to be able to generate power and translate that into work rapidly enough to keep the process going. Plus ability to replicate.If you have an idea with either chickens or eggs I am all ears.

    Perhaps then we are safe to assume neither the chicken or the egg were first life, my guess is something something slimy. How about you? The intelligent designer as first life?

  12. Flint: The post where you couldn’t distinguish between organic chemistry and monks copying texts.

    You’ve confused me with Joe F.

  13. Lies and misrepresentations about Tour’s talk get some answers in the last 15 minutes of the presentation.

    Summary

    Amazing how people who can’t be bothered to watch it know so much about what it contains.

  14. Mung:
    Lies and misrepresentations about Tour’s talk get some answers in the last 15 minutes of the presentation.

    Amazing how people who can’t be bothered to watch it know so much about what it contains.

    Doesn’t matter what the last 15 minutes contains. The first few minutes had enough Creationist misrepresentations to make the whole thing worthless.

  15. colewd: I guess modern science not longer needs testable mechanisms. The string theory guys will be thrilled.

    Why do you say this? Who is claiming science doesn’t need testable mechanisms?

  16. Mung: Correct. Because that’s what he was talking about when he mentioned being unable to fathom a prebiotic molecular route.

    It doesn’t matter what the hell context you try to emphasize, the claim is wrong however you want to frame it.

    Tour is wrong, act as an adult, accept it and move on.

  17. colewd: I have a group experience where the theory mis led scientists into the wrong conclusion. I think, we don’t know, is a better answer than an answer that is almost certainly wrong. We badly need a testable hypothesis or move to the we don’t know position.

    I agree, who disagrees with this? We need a testable model for the origin of life, because we don’t know how life originated.

  18. colewd: OMagain, Question: What is causing large scale evolutionary change.
    Answer: We don’t know at this point.

    But that’s just plain wrong.

    We DO know what is causing large scale evolutionary change. It’s: “The mechanism is genetic change (substitution, insertion, inversion, deletion, transposition, recombination, LGT) followed by concentration by either drift alone or drift + selection, and pinning in place by purifying selection until the wind changes. In very broad terms.” .. And a couple of population level phenomena like migration, isolation and so on.
    This actually explains large-scale evolutionary change and it is testable by comparing the predictions derived from theory against observations made in comparative genetics and the fossil record.

  19. colewd: Good question

    A good question which I expect you to already have an answer. So, to recap, you don’t know what’s right but you sure know what’s wrong. You don’t know how many mechanisms for change there are, but however many there are they are insufficient.

    Is that about it?

  20. Frankie: With ID, just like GAs, organisms were intelligently designed to evolve.

    How do you explain ‘living fossils’ that don’t appear to have evolved much at all lately?

    Seems that everything is designed to evolve except when it isn’t. Could you clarify?

  21. Frankie: They were given the ability to adapt for themselves.

    Was that ability granted before or after OOL? I.E did the designer create first life or tweak it so it was better able to evolve?

    And, of course, bonus points for explaining how you know all this!

  22. Frankie: If you want complex adaptations then evolution by intelligent design is what you need.

    Why did only some strains in Lenski’s experement evolve the ability to digest citrate?

  23. Frankie: I said a DESIGNER is not required to INTERVENE to produce the mutations.

    Seems to me you accept the entirety of evolution, but just dispute that at some point in the past they were given the ability to control their own destiny.

    Congratulations Joe, you’ve come over to the other side at last! Apart from a very small difference at a very low level we both accept the power of evolution.

    Albeit of course you think it is guided somehow, but no matter. You now seem to accept that no designer is required to produce mutations. As such, we now agree much more then we disagree.

    You are a Telic Evolutionist basically! Congratulations! It’s not that bad really I hear!

  24. colewd,

    I have a group experience where the theory mis led scientists into the wrong conclusion.

    Scientists can be wrong, therefore are wrong?

    I think, we don’t know, is a better answer than an answer that is almost certainly wrong. We badly need a testable hypothesis or move to the we don’t know position.

    I’m not sure you (like many others who invoke the ‘testable hypothesis’ gambit) know what one is. But moving to the ‘don’t know’ position would be ridiculous, given the solid evidential foundation of the position and its consilience. Since Darwin, we have had the integration of Mendelian genetics, the mechanism of replication, gene expression and regulation, gene sequences, structural analysis, extensive computational genomics, molecular phylogenetics, the mathematical theory, 160 years more fossils and Christ know what besides. All of it has confirmed Darwin in spades.

    As I’ve said, biologists globally do know, and have absolutely no reason to move to a ‘we don’t know’ position (on the general case, though there are inevitably many gaps because evolution works by elimination and keeps no audit trail). The principal exceptions to the general rule that biologists (reasonably well placed to evaluate the evidence) accept evolution are when they are religious.

    It takes a special kind of mindset to steadily deny any and all the evidence. All you have offered so far is a variation on ‘protein space too big’. Presented with several reasons why that is not relevant to evolution, you respond with ‘protein space too big’.

    Can you summarise your opponents’ position on protein space?

  25. colewd,

    Question: What is causing large scale evolutionary change.
    Answer: We don’t know at this point.

    On what grounds do you dismiss the possibility that it is cumulative small scale evolutionary change? How would we reject this as a null hypothesis (being as how small scale evolutionary change inevitably gets bigger over broader timescales)?

  26. Frankie:
    . . .
    He goes on to say:

    Intelligent design requires neither a meddling God nor a meddled world. For that matter, it doesn’t even require there be a God.

    “Intelligent design is just the Logos theology of John’s Gospel restated in the idiom of information theory.”

    — William Dembski

  27. Rumraket: Tour is wrong, act as an adult, accept it and move on.

    Please address the post not the poster. Or are you under the impression that rule applies only to Frankie?

  28. Frankie: Robin,

    There isn’t any theory of evolution, Robin

    Funny how you seem to be the only ID supporter with this silly perspective. Must be lonely.

    …and Darwin’s isn’t a theory, not in a scientific sense, anyway.

    From All about God:

    http://www.allaboutscience.org/darwins-theory-of-evolution.htm

    Even these bozos hold that Darwin’s concept is an actual theory. You don’t have much supporting your bizarre POV there Joe.

    So what was your point?

    That your statements are not in line with the vast majority of ID supporters, and in particular the founders of ID.

    Is archaeology a theory?

    Yes, in fact there are a number of theories of archaeology.

    Is forensic science a theory?

    Yes, in fact there are a number of theories of forensic science.

  29. Robin,

    I can quote scientists who say there isn’t any theory of evolution. And the fact the you cannot link to it supports my claim. Darwin’s wasn’t a scientific theory as it lacked quantification and a way to test it.

    Please reference these alleged theories of archaeology and forensic science

  30. Patrick:

    “Intelligent design is just the Logos theology of John’s Gospel restated in the idiom of information theory.”

    — William Dembski

    Your quote-mine is duly noted. Too bad you cannot tell us what that quote means.

  31. Frankie: We await your testable hypotheses for unguided evolution.

    No one would ever test that Joe because it’s completely unnecessary. That is an implication of the theory; the actual hypotheses that have been tested create that implication. If you have a beef, it’s with the results of those hypotheses. So, why aren’t you bitching about them?

  32. Robin: Funny how you seem to be the only ID supporter with this silly perspective. Must be lonely.

    I have one that is similar, perhaps the same. There are many theories of evolution.

  33. Robin: No one would ever test that Joe because it’s completely unnecessary. That is an implication of the theory; the actual hypotheses that have been tested create that implication. If you have a beef, it’s with the results of those hypotheses. So, why aren’t you bitching about them?

    LoL! You are just blowing smoke and you know it. Implications, my ass. That is the entire thing. What actual hypotheses have been tested, Robin? Do tell.

    I have a beef with your misrepresentations and nothing more.

  34. Frankie: Robin,

    I can quote scientists who say there isn’t any theory of evolution.

    Please do. Please provide links.

    And the fact the you cannot link to it supports my claim.

    Link to what?

    Darwin’s wasn’t a scientific theory as it lacked quantification and a way to test it.

    There’s no requirement for a scientific theory to have quantification or a way to test it. That applies to hypotheses.

    Please reference these alleged theories of archaeology and forensic science

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archaeological_theory

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forensic_science

  35. Robin,

    You cannot link to this alleged theory of evolution. And yes scientific theories require quantification and there isn’t any quantification of imaginary hypotheses

    My support comes for geneticist Giuseppe Sermonti and Jerome Lejuene- read “Why is a fly not a horse?”

    As for your wiki references I could easily substitute ID in for archaeology and then say there is an ID theory.

  36. Sam:
    I cannot believe that Tour is still getting press on this.

    Everything he said is true so you are right, why is he getting any press on this seeing they don’t care about that?

  37. Mung: I have one that is similar, perhaps the same. There are many theories of evolution.

    If there are “many theories of evolution” and you acknowledge such, in what way are you denying that there is no theory of evolution?

  38. Robin: If there are “many theories of evolution” and you acknowledge such, in what way are you denying that there is no theory of evolution?

    Why can’t anyone link to this alleged theory of evolution?

  39. Sam: I cannot believe that Tour is still getting press on this.

    I cannot believe he would be denied membership in organizations because he is willing to speak the truth.

  40. For example:

    Archaeological theory refers to the various intellectual frameworks through which archaeologists interpret archaeological data.

    ID theory refers to various intellectual frameworks through which scientists interpret scientific data.

  41. Robin: If there are “many theories of evolution” and you acknowledge such, in what way are you denying that there is no theory of evolution?

    It’s the difference between saying there is no theory of evolution and saying there are no theories of evolution.

    It’s like saying there is no theory of abiogenesis. If there is a theory of abiogenesis, what is it?

    ETA: What is the theory of forensic science or what is the theory of archaeology?

  42. Mung: ETA: What is the theory of forensic science or what is the theory of archaeology?

    Or theory of everything?

    Indeed. there are no theories, because there are too many theories.

    Therefore Jesus.

  43. Frankie: LoL! You are just blowing smoke and you know it.

    Sorry Joe, but I don’t have to blow any smoke. That you don’t understand the difference between theory and hypothesis is not my problem.

    Implications, my ass. That is the entire thing. What actual hypotheses have been tested, Robin? Do tell.

    http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1558-5646.2007.00164.x/full

    http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0022519303000997

    http://cogprints.org/800/1/eatdis~1.htm

    https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/10/141002101118.htm

    Do let me know when you finish reading these…

    I have a beef with your misrepresentations and nothing more.

    Noted and dismissed as vacuous.

  44. Frankie: “Intelligent design is just the Logos theology of John’s Gospel restated in the idiom of information theory.”

    — William Dembski

    Your quote-mine is duly noted. Too bad you cannot tell us what that quote means.

    A quote mine uses excerpts to suggest that a person holds a view he or she does not, in fact, hold. Do you think that Dembski doesn’t actually believe that?

    As for what it means, it’s yet more evidence that intelligent design creationism is nothing more than a religiously motivated political movement designed to get around the separation of church and state in the U.S.

  45. Frankie:
    For example:

    ID theory refers to various intellectual frameworks through which scientists interpret scientific data.

    Link please…

  46. Mung: It’s the difference between saying there is no theory of evolution and saying there are no theories of evolution.

    That makes no sense Mung.

    It’s like saying there is no theory of abiogenesis. If there is a theory of abiogenesis, what is it?

    The base theory of abiogenesis is that life arose from inert chemicals through naturalistic processes. There are many offshoot theories investigating different paths of chemical conversion. I particularly like Günter Wächtershäuser’s autotrophic theory of the origin of life.

    ETA: What is the theory of forensic science or what is the theory of archaeology?

    Already provided.

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