On the origin of life

Howdy all.Got a slightly tricky one here. I've been asked to explain "the origin of life" by a member of a discussion forum (not from here) and the article that's been posted in support of the Intelligent creation of life is this link here.Origin of life - creation.comI have my own views, being a scientists of course- but others may have theirs. What flaws might be found in that article?

Welcome to EvC, Lomu. I read through the article and saw that it indeed did support the Theistic view of creation.

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Conclusion

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Life did not arise by physics and chemistry without intelligence. The intelligence needed to create life, even the simplest life, is far greater than that of humans; we are still scratching around trying to understand fully how the simplest life forms work. There is much yet to be learned of even the simplest bacterium. Indeed, as we learn more the ‘problem’ of the origin of life gets more difficult; a solution does not get nearer, it gets further away. But the real problem is this: the origin of life screams at us that there is a super-intelligent Creator of life and that is just not acceptable to the secular mind of today.

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The origin of life is about as good as it gets in terms of scientific ‘proof’ for the existence of God.

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You say you are a scientist and have your own views and beliefs so my question to you is which forum you wish to discuss this in and under which context?
Is your view more akin to science or to faith?Edited by AdminPhat, : No reason given.

Howdy AdminPhat,I'm definitely on the side of a naturalistic view of the creation of life; I don't feel that any supernatural intervention is required to explain the origins of life on Earth. Obviously, others may have a different view."Origins of Life" perhaps?

Thread copied here from the On the origin of life thread in the Proposed New Topics forum.Not really a topic. I'll call it "a question".AdminPhat quit showing up in the online list, so I jumped it.AdminnemooseusEdited by Adminnemooseus, : Post promotion note.

Meant to be a reply to op, not admin.I am not knowledgeable enough to critique most of their claims but I find their conclusion hilarious. We can't intelligently create life yet, therefore it requires super intellignce. They completely ignore the possibility that the fact we can't intentionally create life using our intelligence, could actually be evidence that life cannot be intentionally created by intelligence. 🙄Edited by Riggamortis, : Replied to wrong msg.

Hey Lomu, Well, let's tease apart this article a bit, beginning with the conclusion.

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Life did not arise by physics and chemistry without intelligence. The intelligence needed to create life, even the simplest life, is far greater than that of humans; we are still scratching around trying to understand fully how the simplest life forms work. There is much yet to be learned of even the simplest bacterium. Indeed, as we learn more the ‘problem’ of the origin of life gets more difficult; a solution does not get nearer, it gets further away. But the real problem is this: the origin of life screams at us that there is a super-intelligent Creator of life and that is just not acceptable to the secular mind of today.

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The origin of life is about as good as it gets in terms of scientific ‘proof’ for the existence of God.

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The above argument is incredibly vapid and requires a large leap in logic. First, the argument that "Intelligent humans haven't been able to create life, therefore life must have been designed by an even greater intelligence" represents a gross misunderstanding of why we have not successfully created life from scratch.The reason why is simple, straightforward, and more often than not overlooked: humanity has not yet achieved robust positional control of matter on an atomic level. While we are rapidly gaining towards that technological feat, our current technology cannot do so because -- simply put -- humans and our technology are too big.Unguided chemical reactions, on the other hand, by their very nature involve the positional control of matter according to physical and chemical laws. So the problem of the creation of life in the laboratory is not so much that we lack the intelligence to carry out such a feat, but rather that we lack the "smallness." Make sense?The other difficulty with the conclusion section of the article is that it invokes an obvious "god of the gaps" argument. While biological life does IMHO exhibit suspicious traces and echoes of rational engineering, this does not immediately suggest design by a supernatural entity that communicated misogynistic rituals to a Neolithic band of bloodthirsty nomads.So this article kinda falls apart at this point because it actually hasn't demonstrated anything at all -- except that current models with the origin of life suffer severe problems. But then again, no scientist well-versed in OoL disputes that.More on this article later.Full Disclosure: I'm an ID proponent in the sense that I think teleology is a useful avenue for exploring the origin of biological life. But the creationist ideology is a fantasia wholly divorced from biotic reality and the progress of science.

I mean the more I look at this article, the more it seems as if the author failed AP chem and bio.

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A pure lipid membrane would not allow even the passive movement of the positively-charged ions of mineral nutrients such as calcium, potassium, magnesium, iron, manganese, etc., or the negatively-charged ions such as phosphate, sulfate, etc., into the cell, and they are all essential for life. A pure-lipid membrane would repel such charged ions, which dissolve in water, not lipid. Indeed, a simple fat membrane would prevent the movement of water itself (try mixing a lipid like olive oil with water)!

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Like...cell membranes are composed of phospholipid bilayers with a hydrophilic head facing the outer environ. Apparently the author isn't aware of cell membrane structure, so this paragraph quoted above is pretty much nonsense.

From the source, second paragraph. Not really.We do have plenty of evidence that nature and natural processes existed around 4 billion years ago and also that natural processes kept on continuing and still exist today.On the other side, there's absolutely no evidence that Spooks existed around 4 billion years ago and absolutely no evidence that Spooks kept on continuing till today.So, it's quite a bummer for those creationists. Especially YEC's such as Dr Batten, who did his studies in agriculture, not on the origin of life.

Your profile says that you're a stonemason. In this post you call yourself '...being a scientists of course-...'.Are stonemasons scientists or 'scientists' such as Imams or Priests calling themselves scientists?Edited by Pressie, : No reason given.

Haha, that's a very good pickup Pressie. I'd completely forgotten that I'd filled that section out so many years ago. Must be getting old...But anyway- yes, I'm a stonemason but I also possess a degree in Applied Physics. A strange dichotomy to be sure but there you go. It takes all sorts to run a world, as they say.Many thanks for the responses so far- absolutely brilliant. I'll put up a post or two tomorrow, but off to bed now- I'm in Australia and it's just on 9pm. Night all

Thanks LomuSomething still bothers me.You started off with 'Howdy all'. That is a Texas type of greeting. Aussies would start with something like: 'G'day'.This is just an observation.

I have degrees in History and Sociology. That does not make me a Historian or a Sociologist. What it does make me is an educated, knowledgeable, sorta retired, stay at home dad. Nothing more.

Yeah, something similar with me. I've got a degree in inorganic chemistry. That doesn't make me a chemist at all. It just taught me that I know a little bit more about chemistry than what other people know; but that I really don't know much about chemistry. That's about it.I don't know enough to challenge those hundreds of thousands of specialists on chemistry, from all over the world, on their findings.Edited by Pressie, : No reason given.Edited by Pressie, : No reason given.Edited by Pressie, : No reason given.Edited by Pressie, : No reason given.

I see that Lomu disappeared. My guess is that he will get full marks from his creationist 'University' for posting something on an 'evolutionist' website. In the end his 'Degree' will be worth as much as the education of a 12-year old. He won't get a job in the real world; apart from being able to be preaching to other undereducated people...somewhere in the American Bible Belt or the poor suburbs of western Sydney or around Teheran.In the end Lomu appears to be too stupid to even try to pretend to educated.I would love to see old Lomu greeting those guys in western Sydney with a 'Howdy all', though. It would be a blast. Those guys wouldn't know what to do. You Sepo!Edited by Pressie, : No reason given.

Literally it's been only 2 days since its last post. Give it some time. Some of us have rather busy lives.