From: kalki33!system@lakes.trenton.sc.us
Newsgroups: talk.origins
Subject: Re: Probability of Evolution
Date: Wed, 18 Nov 92 05:20:26 EST
Reply-To: kalki33!system@lakes.trenton.sc.us
Organization: Kalki's Infoline BBS, Aiken, SC, USA

rowe@pender.ee.upenn.edu (Mickey Rowe) writes:

> >"Mass" is not a substance either, but a quantitative measurement of a
> >physical system. We have conservation of mass, and we have conservation
> >of information. What is the difficulty?
> 
> I'm going to leave this to others more capable in this area, but in
> short the difficulty is that you don't know what you're talking about.
> I'll try to give you one thing to chew on, though...  We once had
> another creationist here (Jim Brown, perhaps ?) who felt that the
> genome of any animal that contained a mutation which caused said
> animal to look or act in an abnormal fashion had less information than
> the genome of an animal without that mutation.  By any useful
> understanding of what the word "information" might mean, this is
> false, but I suspect that you would have agreed with that other
> individual.  Am I correct?  (i.e. do you think that any mutation that
> makes say, a dog less dog-like constitutes a reduction of information
> in some absolute sense?)

Huh?

> >> >In spite of the fact that the laws of physics are very simple, and in
> >> >spite of the fact that scientists can not even begin to precisely
> >> >specify any set of initial conditions for the origin of life,
> >> >nevertheless, simply because they want to believe it, they claim that
> >> >"in principle" there is such a set of initial conditions that will turn
> >> >lifeless matter into living organisms in a certain period of time.
> >> 
> >> Please point to two scientists that claim this and please include
> >> documentation that the claim is made for the reason you cite, or
> >> retract your strawman.  A failure on your part to do either will gain
> >> me a lot of credit on the talk.origins home game...
> >
> >James Watson in The Molecular Biology of the Gene, p. 54, which was
> >quoted in another post.
> 
> Although Watson in a typical fit of hubris claimed absolute certainty
> that current life can be explained entirely by physical chemistry, he
> did not address abiogenesis in the quotes you posted.  Furthermore
> there was nothing in the posted quote which indicated that Watson's
> hubris came about because he "wanted to believe" what he said.

I beg your pardon. I thought that hubris was not a valid scientific
method. I also thought that one of the supposed properties of life is
that it arose through abiogenesis.

Or maybe abiogenesis is one of the properties of life. In that case
Watson's statement, which was made about ALL the properties of life,
certainly counts as referring to abiogenesis.

Sincerely,
Kalki Dasa


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Newsgroups: talk.origins