From time to time, when I am not actively engaged in “dishonest quote-mining” of materialists and evolutionists, I take time to actually read their writings. Today I was reading John Maynard Smith.
I now want to take a great leap forward in time, and suppose that not only has a modern protein-synthesizing machinery evolved, but that specific enzymes exist catalysing specific reactions, and that the organism has a cell membrane which prevents the products of catalysis from diffusing away.
– p. 115
This isn’t a great leap forward in time, it’s just a great leap. Poof! A cell membrane! I love how that just magically appeared. Let’s assume a fully functional cell membrane.
It seems likely that repair enzymes evolved early, because the need for them would have been much greater before the appearance of an ozone layer in the atmosphere.
– p. 118
Poof! Repair enzymes! Because they were needed. You couldn’t make this stuff up.
Source:
The Theory of Evolution
John Maynard Smith
First published by Penguin Books 1958
Cambridge University Press (Canto edition), 1993
ISBN 0 521 45128 0
Chapter 6: The Origin and Early Evolution of Life
If there’s a point, I am not seeing it.
Everyone agrees that Origin of Life has not been explained.
It’s always hilarious to read creotards mocking evolution using expressions like “poof” or “religion” and all that stuff. Thanks for the good laugh Mung
I try. 🙂
If only he had said that God did it.
What a great explanation!
Glen Davidson
Try reading for comprehension instead
Poof is exactly what evolutiondom must place its trust in to bring the glory of complexity and diversity.
Its got to come out of nothing. they must have glorious operations in nature come suddenly just at entry level alone.
its just very unlikely and is a fable.
Thats why small numbers of ID/YEC thinkers so easily have threatened and are knocking down this poof empire.
Good thread.
It seems that you were engaged in dishonest quote-mining after all.
Mung,
And yet it’s still better than anything your side has to offer!
So however disparagingly you may think of what’s on the table, it’s even worse for you, you have less!
Mung,
Out of interest, are you actually saying that John Maynard Smith is of the opinion that things just poof into being when they are needed and in advance of being needed, because that’s how evolution works?
Again, is that your opinion or John Maynard Smith’s?
Some of my ancestors are named “Outlaw”. Although there is evidence that my Outlaw ancestors arrived in Virginia from England in the 1600’s, I don’t know exactly how they got here: what ship, when & where did it leave, when & where did it arrive, who was on board, who the captain was, and so forth.
By your logic, my deduction that I have English ancestors is just a matter of “poof” because I cannot produce an exact chain of steps demonstrating my claim. Indirect evidence, according to you, is worthless.
Creationists are hyper-skeptical when it comes to evolution, but not much else.
Thanks for the explanation, Professor. I’ve occasionally wondered about that for over ten years! 😉
Mung typed that on a 1958 computer.
shallit,
And evos are hyper-skeptical when it comes to any and all alternatives to their nonsensical position but not much else. They definitely don’t aim that skepticism at evolutionism.
The OoL directly impacts any and all subsequent evolution any events. If the OoL = ID then it is a given that organisms were designed to evolve and evolved by design.
It is only if the OoL was via stochastic processes would we infer evolution is by stochastic processes.
And it is very telling that evolutionists cannot grasp such a simple point.
I’m hyper-skeptical about claims made about creationists too.
I have the Turing tape here as evidence.
Of course they do. Do you think all ‘evolutionists’ agree? If so, I can demonstrate otherwise quite easily.
Their disagreements however are of a different form to yours, of course.
If?
How does that follow? Selection by performance works. It’s a test that has innumerable applications, not just in biology.
Which is beside the point when one considers that the selection process in evolution is non-random.
Simply wrong!
Alan Fox,
The same way it follows that cars are designed and the way the move is also by design
What about elimination by performance? Does it work and how are you defining “work”?
LoL! Non-sequitur- STOCHASTIC and NS is non-random only in a very trivial sense, ie not all changes have the same probability of being eliminated.
And yet you just proved my point!
It’s funny how the people who literally believe in the poof-and-there-it-was-by-magic theory feel the need to scold the gradualist alternative.
Why are you reading a book on the origin and early evolution of life from 1958?
Mung,
No answer to my point, just a one-liner. Typical Mungism.
I wasn’t able to identify with anything you wrote. You were obviously talking about someone else.
Why does anyone read anything that’s more than a year old? And you might note that it’s not a book “on the origin and early evolution of life.”
There are a million different reasons one might do that. And you haven’t answered.
So it’s a chapter. Now, why read a chapter on the origin from 1958?
Ohh, ohh, I think I know this one! So you can bold certain words and phrases in it as an attempt to create an argument where there is not one?
Because I wanted to.
Mung,
Still avoiding the point.
So Rumraket, I take it the following is off the table:
Herrera’s ‘Plasmogenia’ and Other Collected Works: Early Writings on the Experimental Study of the Origin of Life
Or how about Oparin’s The Chemical Origin of Life?
One wonders why people who already *know* the answer to the origin of life spend so much time reading what they know to be incorrect. Why bother?
It’s comments just like this that make me wonder why I ever took you off ignore. You don’t really care what anyone thinks because you already have your mind made up about what they think.
As an interest in the history of science on the origin and early evolution of life, it is fine.
But you’re presenting quotes from old literature in your op as if it represents established contemporary science that people actually believe, and you mock it.
Which is idiotic to say the least. Particularly since it is obvious from the quotes themselves that they are honestly stated to be assumptions. There’s a sort of hidden “if the reader will grant me this for the sake of argument”-type thought between the lines. It reads like Maynard Smith is trying to set up the starting conditions for speculations about what the earliest stages of cellular life might have been like. Given the nature of the subject it is necessarily speculatory and nowhere does it read to me like it is pretended otherwise. Then why the infantile mockery?
But you are the one who believes they were literally poofed into existence because they were needed.
In contrast the part you quote actually gives reason for thinking they evolved early. Is there something wrong with that inference or do you just enjoy laughing at your own caricature of evolution that curiously involves things being poofed into existence?
It seems likely that repair enzymes evolved early, because the need for them would have been much greater before the appearance of an ozone layer in the atmosphere.
That’s just downright ignorant. Things don’t evolve because the need for them was greater sooner rather than later.
The problem is that you don’t understand what is meant by the word “need” in this context. It is a selective pressure. In general terms it just means a selective pressure is present that makes certain mutations, should they happen. advantageous.
In this particular context It means that as ionizing UV radiation is hitting the Earth, more mutations are caused by it. Some of which would, by chance, cause DNA breakage.
So there’s a huge population of bacteria in the oceans, and they all suffer mutations. Some of them have their DNA strings broken, for example. But that radiation is also causing mutations in enzymes that act on the DNA. You see where this is going already? Since bacteria that can piece their DNA back together would outcompete bacteria that die due to DNA breakage, that very selective pressure will eventually cause DNA-modifying enzymes of various sorts to become repair-enzymes.
That’s it, that’s how something that is needed (which just means “would be advantageous”) can evolve without any foresight.
shallit,
Perhaps just a matter of faith
No, it has to be seen for what it is and context matters.