If evolutionists are not studying the origin of life, then who is? This is a sincere question. I thought evolutionists were studying how proteins assembled themselves into complex, living structures.
Various biochemists are studying the origins of life. Evolutionists are not because the origin of life is not a part fo evolution. Evolution only addresses how life, already formed, changes from one generation to the next.
What assumptions? At least they're trying. At least they're experimenting. What would you rather they have done? How can they find the chemical reaction you're referring to if they don't experiment using the means they know?
The problem is they've made probability calculations. You cannot make a propability calculation without actually knowing the circumstances under which a particular thing occurs.
Who is considering prions living organisms? They don't do a single thing that would classify them as living. Prions don't metabolize, adapt, reproduce, etc. They induce changes in other proteins. They're nothing BUT protein.
Actually they do multiply. Prions are capable of modifying existing proteins in such a ways that the modified protein causes other proteins it comes in contact with to spread. This is a form of reproduction.
The thing is, one of the most important things that you seem to completely failto understand is that "life" is an arbitrary term that HUMANS have defined. It's a construct. Life is whatever we've defined it to be.
They have to use something. And it's not like scientists won't tell you they have a pretty good idea of what the soup may have been like.
There are a myriad of theories of what the soup might have been like or even if there WAS a soup. We've discovered life in some very strange locations. Locations previously thought impossible to harbor life. So picking a theoretical primordial soup and trying to spontaneously generate life but failing only proves one thing: either your conditions or your methods are wrong.
Read it again; it says the PROTEINS of an amoebae.
yeah and you might as well use the PROTEINS of a human. Amoebaes are complex organisms with complex proteins, most of which are created by themselves. A subset of the proteins they are made up of can also be made from simpler life forms. And the same is true and so on and so one the lower you go down the chain. I doubt we have found the "simplest life form".
1. I don't know; look it up.
2. Again, it said the proteins.
And again, the trying to spontaneously generate the proteins of an Amoeba is tantamount to trying to spontaneously generate the proteins of an octopus.
Please use the term fallacy again. I can't wait to read it just once more
If you don't like it, stop making fallacious arguments.
How is it irrelevant? Whose motive?
The article said "he was a believer in spontaneous generation until this" in an attempt to fallaciously give more credit to the claim. It was an inverse appeal to motive. Appeal to Motive is of the form:
A makes claim B
A is biased
therefore B is false
This took the form:
A now makes claim B
A was biased against B
therefore B must be true
The article's primary purpose is the illustrate the lunacy of believing in the spontaneous generation of life. To support this motive, they denote that the scientist once believed in the lunacy; however, after having collected the evidence from his experiments, he no longer believes. How is that irrelevant?
As I said, Inverse appeal to motive.
Circular reasoning? What circle? Where? I said that God can do anything He wants because He made everything. Circular reasoning would be saying that, "we date the fossils by the rocks they're found in, then we date the rocks by the fossils they contain."
You're right it wasn't Circular reasoning because you didn't use anything to justify god's existance. Thus this was actually an Argument from Ignorance Fallacy:
A is fact
B cannot explain A
therefore C
In your argument you can replace the word "god" with "magic", "super space gnomes", "the invisible pink unicorn", or any other supernatural fictitious force or being and it would carry the exact same weight.
You can't prove God exists,
Correct, which is why god has no place in any logical argument. Any invocation of god or any other unproveable concept is an Argument from Ignorance fallacy.
just like you can't prove how something can come from nothing on its own,
Actually according to the first law of thermodynamics, you can't get something from nothing. You can't logically prove it, but if you hold the laws of thermodynamics to be acceptably accurate then you can in fact say you can have confidence that you cannot create something from nothing.
despite not having proven how the laws to govern said thing came from nothing
The laws of physics didn't come from nothing, they always existed.
, and despite not having proven how the creation of those laws
The laws of physics were never created
were governed by laws whose creation cannot be explained
There was no creation
because the origination questioning goes on and on forever.
No it doesn't. Existance goes on forever and ever. The orgination question has a simple answer: "there was no origin"
I wish I knew some fancy "Appeal to Proffer Proof of an Unprovable Fallacy". "Fallacious Appeal to Fallaciously Circumvent the Topic by Surreptitiously Requesting a known Unprovable."
Filler. Funny stuff though.
Logical
Adj.
1. Capable of or reflecting the capability for correct and valid reasoning.
2. Based on known statements or events or conditions.
3. Marked by an orderly, logical, and aesthetically consistent relation of parts.
4. Capable of thinking and expressing yourself in a clear and consistent manner.
Which of the following conditions best reflects a nature characteristic of the WordWeb definitions noted above:
1. A complex, orderly arrangement of sophisticated substances assembled themselves randomly and without any governing assistance whatsoever, or
2. A higher intelligence assembled said substances.
Oooo, you got a couple there.
1) Straw man.
"A complex, orderly arrangement of sophisticated substances assembled themselves randomly and without any governing assistance whatsoever"
That's a straw man. No one is claiming that.
2) False dilemma
Once again you pose 2 possibilities when there are many.
3) Figure of Speech fallacy
Innappropriate application of the term "logical".
Okay, well let me say the same thing about you using a definition! Fallacy, fallacy, fallacy! Vocabular snobbery fallacy! I didn't know it could be considered snobbish to QUOTE A DEFINITION DIRECTLY FROM A DICTIONARY.
The snobbery is the fact that you picked on the definition of the word rather than address the actual issue at hand.
Okay, taking Vocabular Snobbery first, I must ask what you mean by that? You quoted several similar definitions, none of which appear in a dictionary. You are guilty of a Logical Positivism Fallacy, which you can read about at Wikipedia.
No I'm not because I don't hold scientific fact to be universal truth. There are only 2 universal truths: logic and math. Science is based on observations which are ultimately fallible. As such, at most one can have very high confidence but one can never actually "know" when it comes to science.
*SNIPPED the rest of Logical Positivism*
And Data Snooping Fallacy? Holy crap, are you serious? Where do you get this from?! I looked up an impartial definition. Since when is knowledge not allowed to be referenced in a discussion? Which definition did I choose? I posted four, speaking later about none of them. I addressed the argument by posting the definition, but I suppose that got lost in translation.
You took the first dictionary definition that didn't fit the one I gave. I can find you at least 50 different definitions of "faith" from many different dictionaries. In any case, it doesn't even matter because when asking for the definition of a word, all that is being asked is a decrease in ambiguity. I gave my definition, therefore ambuiguity has been removed. You changed the definition to change your meaning. This is a form of "Figure of Speech Fallacy" in fact. It even borders on Amphibology.
You're requesting to have something I said labeled abusive? Did I explicitly say that you were either,
A. Obtuse, or
B. Stubborn?
I insinuated that you appeared to be either of those two things, never labeling you either one. And neither of them are slanderous. 'Obtuse' simply states that you may be slowing in understanding my point
Obtuse is an insult
(any negative connotations are yours to infer), and 'stubborn' means that you are willfully ignoring what you know to be true, simply for the sake of being argumentative. I did not insult you. However, should your feelings have been hurt by what I said, I humbly apologize. If my intent was to cast denigrations I would have chosen more choice fruits.
Apology accepted, please refrain from ad hominem in the future.
Again, I don't see how this can be true. Evolution addresses the development of life starting with the building blocks, no?
No. Evolution only addresses how life changes over time, not how it was formed.
Planets and stars, mainly.
You're looking for astrophysics then, not evolution.
How can something be known to be immutable when the inquirer is so vastly limited in his understanding? We are only human and can only know so much. And anything that we think we know we know by assumptions. I did not CREATE math, therefore I can only appear to understand it.
No one created math. Math does not exist based on observations. No components of mathematics are based on anything fallible thus it is infallible. Same with logic. Logic is absolute as is math. Neither relies on a phrase of reference, or even for anything to exist.
Thus, anything I say about math is subject to being flawed because I am incapable of perfection.
Math and logic are universal truths that are not rooted in observations. 1 will always be 1. 2 will always be 2. 1 + 2 will always be 3. They are defined as such and thus always are.
A theory is, "a well-substantiated explanation of some aspect of the natural world; an organized system of accepted knowledge that applies in a variety of circumstances to explain a specific set of phenomena."
Thats the common use definition. That is not how "theory" as a scientific term is defined. Just as "heat" and "temperature" mena something different in thermodynamics than they do in everyday use.
What part of macroevolution is "well-substantiated"? And I hope you're not insinuating that evolution is a fact, because if you are you need to tell me how macroevolution is any of the following:
1. A statement or assertion of verified information about something that is the case or has happened.
Yep, it's number 1. Macroevolution has happened.
2. An event known to have happened or something known to have existed.
Cool it fits definition too. Yes macroevolution is known to have happened.
3. A concept whose truth can be proved.
Yes it has been proven to have occurred and proven it does occur. We even have a very good idea of the "how." What we don't have is perfect precision of the "how" part of it.
4. A piece of information about circumstances that exist or events that have occurred.
Yep, that too. Cool it fits every definition.
Okay, so Lamarckism is used in Memetics and no longer used in evolutionary discussion; I'll give you that.
Why is the onus suddenly ALL on me. Prove evolution to me using the fossil record.
I'm not an evolutionist. I could point you to some texts on the subject though. A lot of the biochem stuff goes right over my head unfortunately. I cna however read studies and findings and from having worked in pharmaceuticals for years I'm a pretty good judge of how well a trial was designed and how appropriate the conclusions are based on the trial design.
Anyway, the onus is on YOU when it comes to saying god created anything. You could completely disprove evolution and it still wouldn't do a single thing towards proving god did anything.
You're right; I used that term in order to demonstrate the ludiocrasy of believing in the fossil record as tangible proof of macroevolution.
No one is saying the fossil record alone is proof of anything. It's evidence used in conjunction with other evidence, proven chemical reactions, known biologicla processes, etc. in order to form a proof. it's just a tiny piece of a very large puzzle.
I don't care. Instead of talking about the fossil record, you're telling me I made a booboo by casting an aspersion. Discrediting me by showing me ample transitional forms from the fossil record is a much better tactic
Not really. You're relying much more on fossils than any scientist does. Fossils only show us specific examples. They help fill in the blanks of how certain creatures evolved but aren't necessary for the overall theory of evolution. As for the frequency of fossils, they are RARE. EXTREMELY RARE. The circumstances under which a fossil is created are like powerball odds rare. Worse.
to show that I don't know what I'm talking about, or you can just keep labeling everything I say as either 'this fallacy' or 'that fallacy'.
Stop making fallacious arguments then. Don't complain to me just because you haven't been very good at forming logical arguments.
Not as purposely thin as you think.
So you admit it was a purposeful attack. You're ethics in this debate are showing thinner than your veiling on your ad hominems then.
This is ridiculous. My comment said NOT ONE THING ABOUT THE AGE OF THE BIBLE. If it did, show me. I'll give you every single thing I own right now if you can take my one comment and show me how I insinuated that the age of the Bible proves my comment to be true.
Ok, I'll give you that. I made an assumption regarding your psychology. It was fallacious because I dont' know your history.
Doesn't change the fact that you used the bible though.
My personal interpretation:
A. The Bible is true is true because
B. The Bible is God's Word.
B. The Bible is God's Word is true because
C. It has proven Itself to be so.
Please prove C before making this argument. Otherwise this is another argument from ignorance.
btw, you have 2 "B"s
Aparently no circle, instead just another argument from ignorance.
Argumentum ad Nauseum fallacy. Repeating it doesn't make it true. You didn't prove it the first time, just syaing it over again doesn't make it correct.
Well that makes it pretty easy to argue anything in your favor, doesn't it? Fallacy of the Unassigned and Unimpartially Insinuated Metasyntactical Variables.
You're killin' me, Smalls, killin' me.
Not really, since using metasyntactical variables without a translation means absolutely nothing. It only has meaning after you replace the variable with their given postulates.
So let's take circular reasoning for exmaple.
A is true because of B
B is true because of A
In and of itself all that dictates is form. It doesn't refer to any specific argument. However if you replace A with "the bible" and B with "god" you get something like this
the bible is true because the god says so
god is true because the bible says so
Or in common use language:
The bible is infallible because it is the word of god
We know it is the word of god because the bible says so
Sometimes it can be difficult to identify the form an argument takes, that's why it is handy to abstract each piece into a metasyntactical variable.
