Abiogenesis and Evolution

A poster over on Topix has gotten his head stuck on Abiogenesis and keeps using it to try and bash Science in general, and Evolution in particular.  Funny how the same arguments keep coming around, it's just new people making them as the old posters fade away.  Or maybe it's the same posters simply using different handles.  Makes little difference, their arguments do show a lack of originality.  The most amusing thing to me is how Creationists keep making the same arguments and then coming into places like Topix pretending that it's something new.  You have no idea how often I have heard the breaking news of Darwin recanting on his deathbed, how Pasteur's Biogenesis makes evolution impossible, or that thermodynamics disproves Evolution.  Fun, but pretty foolish!  Fifth-grade science pretty well settled those arguments for me, and that was with a priest and a lay-person as science teachers!

This particular Topix poster called himself 'Blitzkrieg' and usually refers to Abiogenesis as 'Mud to Man', which as anyone who understands what Abiogenesis is knows how foolish a comment that is to make.  He further brags about his misunderstanding by comparing Abiogenesis to other scientific theories, which again anyone familiar with the subjects knows that Abiogenesis is not a scientific theory, but an area of study containing a number of hypotheses.

Like most creationists, he fails to understand what that means.  He refuses to allow anyone to have a dissenting opinion from his own and he constantly refuses to be educated, even to the smallest degree, on the subject.  I will endeavor to express most of his misunderstandings here.

First of all, some terms.  I've written about them before (Arguments XIX -- Hypothesis, Theory, and Law and Words have meanings):

• Fact: In science, an observation that has been repeatedly confirmed and for all practical purposes is accepted as “true”. Truth in science, however, is never final and what is accepted as a fact today may be modified or even discarded tomorrow.
• Hypothesis: A tentative statement about the natural world leading to deductions that can be tested. If the deductions are verified, the hypothesis is provisionally corroborated. If the deductions are incorrect, the original hypothesis is proved false and must be abandoned or modified. Hypotheses can be used to build more complex inferences and explanations.
• Law: A descriptive generalization about how some aspect of the natural world behaves under stated circumstances.
• Theory: In science, a well-substantiated explanation of some aspect of the natural world that can incorporate facts, laws, inferences, and tested hypotheses.

At its heart Abiogenesis is an idea, a concept, and a process.  What it is not is a scientific theory or even a hypothesis.  Look at the terms, do any of them fit?  No, and at this point in time, they shouldn't.  We can't use any of those labels at this point in time.  One day we might have a Theory of Abiogenesis, in other words a well-established explanation of how life began.  We aren't even close yet.  But to offer religious explanations is ridiculous because religion is not science.  It can't be tested, measured, falsified, or predicted.  Religion is a belief without evidence while science is all about the evidence.

Evidence starts with something we observe.  It doesn't have to be absolute, but a known, repeatable observation.  For example gravity started with the observation that things fall down.  Nice piece of evidence.  The questions start with 'Why do things fall down?'  The study of gravity has have a number of hypotheses over time and we formed a theory, complete with some laws (how gravity behaviors under very specific criteria).  

What do we really know that would contribute toward Abiogenesis?  We know that life exists. There's a fact, one even Blitzkrieg cannot dispute.  We can make an assumption that at some point in the past life had a start.  Is it an assumption, certainly.  But since everything else that has occurred had a start, it's a pretty good assumption.  I'm sure Blitzkrieg will disagree, but even he cannot name something that did not have a beginning!  He might offer opinion, but the only things he can name are things that we don't know how it started.  There is nothing to say we won't know how it started someday.  Go back a few decades, centuries, or millenia and you will be able to name many things that the beginning wasn't known at that time . . . but we know much more today -- and not a single one them didn't have a natural process.  What we want to do is figure out how it started.  That's the term 'Abiogenesis' means, that area of study within Science.  Here's the definition from Wikipedia: 

"Abiogenesis or biopoiesis or OoL (Origins of Life), is the natural process of life arising from non-living matter, such as simple organic compounds. It is thought to have occurred on Earth between 3.8 and 4.1 billion years ago, and is studied through a combination of laboratory experiments and extrapolation from the genetic information of modern organisms in order to make reasonable conjectures about what pre-life chemical reactions may have given rise to a living system."(Wikipedia: Abiogenesis)

What Abiogenesis does have is a number of potential explanations.  Yes, the matter is certainly not settled, but there are a number of possible answers, here are a few:

• Chemical Origins
• Clay Hypothesis
• Deep-hot biosphere
• Panspermia
• Extraterrestrial organic molecules
• PAH world hypothesis

Unlike Blitzkrieg, you can do your own homework and check them out for yourself. But the bottom line comes down to as of yet, we do not know how life started on Earth. It is within the realm of possibility we may never know to 100% certainty. But if the history of science has taught us anything it's that tomorrow we will know more than we do today. In one year, in 10 years, even in 100 years we will know considerably more than we do today.

Now what Blitz is doing is trying to use his strawman of 'mud to man' as a way to bash evolutionary theory.  He doesn't do a good job of it.  For one reason his mud-to-man is a strawman and not particularly applicable.  The other reason is while there is a relationship between Evolution and Abiogenesis, the theories are not dependent on each other.  For example I listed 6 potential Abiogenesis explanations above, none of them would have much impact on evolutionary theory.  For when it comes to evolution, it really wouldn't matter which one of them -- or a completely different explanation -- turned out to be true.  So basically Blitz is firing blanks.

In closing, please remember that Science closes no doors, not even the religious ones.  But we also don't spend much in the way of resources addressing religious ideas.  History has once again shown us that they tend not to pan out.  Just ask any honest intelligent design 'theorist'.  What scientific advances have been made using Intelligent Design 'Theory' . . . the silence will say more than I ever could.  I've asked the question before and while there were a lot of words said in their responses, they named absolutely nothing!  Oh they love to cite examples of humans using intelligence to design things -- but that's not what Intelligent Design 'Theory' is all about.

I also asked a number of Creationists what scientific advances have been made using Creationism and their responses like to list scientists in history who also believed in God, but at no time have they ever specified what scientific theories, or what parts of scientific theories, show an application of 'Creationism'. Funny, isn't it?  Well to me, anyway.

What if people stopped believing in Darwin?

Ann Gauger, you know the lady with the non-existent lab over at the Biologic Institute, posted something totally ridiculous:  "What If People Stopped Believing in Darwin?"

First the obvious, people do not 'believe' in Darwin, any more than they 'believe' in gravity.  What people do is accept the explanations from real scientists when it comes to explaining phenomena like Evolution and Gravity.  There is a world of difference between belief and acceptance of an explanation.  I do understand why Ann, and her cohorts at the Discovery Institute, have trouble understanding the difference, they demand faith with no supporting evidence.  But that's the obvious critique.  Let's have some fun.

First off, let us remember who Ann works for, the Biologics Institute, which is the pet apologetic 'lab' of the Discovery Institute (DI).  When you factor that in, you know she's not talking about evolution being out of the picture, but her religious alternative being the only game in town.   That being said, it certainly changes the picture, because everyone knows how open-minded and accepting theists can be, right?

One of her comments was a real corker:

"Biology students might feel free to express their opinions on origins."

Since when does having a religious explanation for anything make people feel free to express their opinions?  Annie's point is that because of Darwin students don't feel free to offer their opinion.  Of course that's not the whole truth, because I have yet to be in a classroom where student's didn't raise their opinion.  One of my students read this blog and wanted to discuss in class -- and I teach Information Technology!  What I think Ann means is that theists do not feel free to raise their non-scientific objections to evolution in science class.  If Ann had said that I would heartily agree.  Raising a religious objection to actual science IN science class is a waste of time and deserves to be shut down.  I did shut down my student by explaining that Life's Origins aren't an appropriate topic during Java Programming.  When he persisted, I invited him to comment on the blog or discuss it after class.  He chickened out and did neither.  But that's the point, Creationism is not science and other than a brief historical perspective, doesn't belong in science class.

Let me give you a for-instance.  Suppose you are a member of a church-going family who for years went to the same church as many of your neighbors, you are involved in church activities, and lived in the area and raised your family there.  Then you get more than a little annoyed when a cross gets burned in your son's arm by his science teacher and you dare to question it.  Not only that, but you learn that the 'science' teacher in question isn't teaching science, but his very evangelical view of science.  You have the audacity to complain.  What happens?

Well according to Ann, you should have been welcomed, your opinions and questioning should be encouraged, and all Christians are nothing but polite and accepting people, right?

However the reality seems a bit different, as an article about the family who dared raise questions about John Freshwater in Mt Vernon Oh:

"We've gotten phone calls, things in the mail, anonymous letters. They send scriptures and how you should raise your children, implying we're not raising our children correctly. Everywhere we go I feel like people know it's us so they don't talk to us or they will say things. Even in church." Eventually it was too much for the Dennis family. They moved 35 miles away."

This isn't an isolated instance, do you recall the Dover Trial, or shall we call it by it's usual name:  "Tammy Kitzmiller, et al. v. Dover Area School District, et al".  What happened to Tammy Kitzmiller and her family?  More examples of welcoming, openness, and acceptance?  No, she and her daughters received hate mail, accusations of being atheists, her children confronted, confrontations in restaurants and in the street.

Sure, religion does nothing but open people's minds and hearts! Maybe other religions do, but apparently not Christianity. In a review of Lauri Lebo's excellent book "Devil in Dover" from the Aetiology blog:

" . . .that even most of the biology teachers at Dover were church-going Christians, yet they were ostracized and bad-mouthed by those supporting the school board’s anti-evolution stance–rejected and slandered by Christians who seemingly had no problem attacking fellow believers."

I have to repeat this phrase:  " . . .no problem attacking fellow believers".  Sure, Ann, dismissing Darwin makes everything sunny and bright.  Really?  As you can see I find it hard to believe that if somehow Darwin disappeared overnight, so much would change for the better.  Look at all the people living under repressive religious regimes.  Are you going to tell me Christianity would be different?  Was it in the past?  Tell me when?  Show me an example!

More from Ann:

"The world would see a new flush of academic freedom."

Since when does religion encourage academic freedom?  Seriously, I am asking.  How many professors and teachers have gotten in trouble for teaching evolution?  Too many to count, like John Scopes, Pamela Hensley, Tom Oord, Gary Scott, Stacy Mendrick . . ..  The impact was directly on them teaching evolution.  They did their job and got in trouble.  People forget that the textbook John Scopes was using included evolution or that Pamela Hensley and Stacy Mendrick were well regarded teachers who were teaching the required elements of their courses.  The list is quite long, and not always at a parochial school, but public schools as well usually due to parental pressure,  So this is how religion improves academic freedom?

Now aside from the marketing campaign by the DI, how many teachers got in trouble for teaching Creationism/ID?  While the DI likes to trot out people like Caroline Coker, John Freshwater, and Guillermo Gonzales, the real story is a little different.  These people were hired to perform a job, usually to teach science.  However they made a personal decision that their religious beliefs precluded them from performing their job.  And when they get held accountable, they whined about religious discrimination and the DI trots them out as victims.  I don't see them as victims.  They took the job under false pretenses -- I see them as liars.  Of course Freshwater did more than just fail in his job, but that's another story.

Now I would like to believe that I wouldn't accept a job that conflicted with my belief set so strongly I couldn't do it.  I would be honest about it rather than say one thing and then perform another.  But that's just me and how I was raised.  I guess that level of honesty isn't needed when you are lying in the cause of your religion.  You could ask kennie ham, but he does the same sort of stuff.


Of course she had to try and drag in 'Academic Freedom', which anyone with a functioning brain knows that's not what the Discovery Institute is interested in.  It's just another tactic to try and wedge their way into the classroom.  Their idea of academic freedom means to be able to teach their religion as if it were science and to remove real science from the classroom.  Don't blame me, it's their stated goal:  to replace science with a more theistic-ally friendly version.  It's again like little kennie ham who's idea of religious freedom is to be free to believe how he wants and force others to believe as he [kennie] wants as well.  Not very open-minded and accepting.

One last thing and then I will go back to ignoring most of annie's posts.  Here final comment:

 "That's why they say scientific revolutions happen one funeral at a time." 

Really, so scientific theories get replaced when the author or supporters die off?  Apparently that hasn't worked for Darwin and the Theory of Evolution at all, has it?  It didn't work for Alfred Wegener, whose theory of Continental Drift didn't get confirmed until 20 or 30 years after his death.  I wonder if she expecting the next generation of scientists to knock Darwin to the curb and instill her organization's pet ideas?  Maybe that does explain why they [the DI, annie, wild bill and the lot], don't bother doing science and only marketing and public relations in their efforts to damage science education.

I wonder where annie expects to next breakthroughs in vaccines, medical treatments, and new technologies to come from?  Divine intervention?  Yea, like that has worked real well so far.  Let's ask Ian, Neil, Matthew, Austin, Amy, Robyn, Andrew, Harrison, Nancy, Dennis, Arrian, Zachery, Troy, Shauntay, and Rhett.  Oh, wait you can't.  They all died because some people, often their theist parents, believed prayer beats out medical care.  Not a great track record.

Backdoors take on a whole new meaning . . . or maybe not

Being a Christian and holding to what was taught to me years ago as Christian values used to be a small source of pride.  Do unto others, taking care of the people around you, honesty . . . yes, these were the hallmarks of being a Christian I was once taught.  Nowadays, I have become quite ashamed at many who profess to be Christians.  In my opinion, while little kennie ham is the poster child for un-Christian-like behavior, he isn't the only one.  Here's a group who seem to think being dishonest is the pathway to heaven.

The latest example is the 'Creation Summit' group who is holding a conference at Michigan State University.  Now I am not against their conference, but what I am against is how they are marketing it.  Here is a link to their web page about it "Origin Summit".  Right now, as of 27 Oct 2014, there is not a single mention of who sponsored it on campus, only that it is at Michigan State.  I find this a disreputable tactic.  The group got on campus through a campus student religious group.  Do they mention that in it's online advertising?  What it does is give the impression of being sponsored by the University!  As far as I know the only thing the University is involved in is providing a location.

This isn't the first time Christian groups have done this.  I recall the Discovery Institute bragging about a conference at SMU that was also sponsored by an on-campus ministry, but again they forgot to mention that part.  They love to make it sound as if the University invited them there.  I posted about one ("Intelligent Design Tolerance") where Stephen Meyer of the Discovery Institute thanked the “SMU administration” for hosting the event, when the SMU Administration had nothing to do with the it at all.

I recall one of the DI's favorite sons, davy klinghoffer tried to wangle an invitation for a DI rep to speak at the University of Vermont by writing to one of the professor's Nicholas Gotelli and got back what has to be one of the classic responses in history.  If you don't remember it, you can refresh your memory here.  The highlights is that after writing a scathing rebuttal to an opinion piece written by Professor Gotelli on Ben Stein being invited as the commencement speaker, davy tried to get him to invite the DI to speak.  The professor responded with such gems as

"However, this kind of two-faced dishonesty is what the scientific community has come to expect from the creationists."

"I would not invite a creationist to a debate on campus for the same reason that I would not invite an alchemist, a flat-earther, an astrologer, a psychic, or a Holocaust revisionist."

"Practicing scientists receive frequent invitations to speak in science departments around the world, often on controversial and novel topics. If creationists actually published some legitimate science,  they would receive such invitations as well."

Typical tactics!  When your ideas cannot stand the light of day, you use someone policies, like the University's policies on allowing student groups to use school facilities, and try and make it sound like the University is sponsoring the revival meeting.  Pretty sneaky way to try and identify with some legitimacy.  This 'Creation Summit' group even advertise this tactic on their website, and guess what they call it? 

See, they even call it a 'Backdoor Strategy'.  Instead of doing the work that will get them invited, even welcome, in through the front door -- they seem to be proud of the fact they are sneaking in.  And at the end of the 'summit' sites is a call for you to donate money or goods.  Yes, let's allow them to misrepresent themselves and get the opportunity to pay for the privilege.

Does being a Christian nowadays mean having no shame when using such disreputable tactics?